Ok. This text is a copy of the starting fo rhte the second new Thread I am created in the DTivo forum. Just like there this thread is most definately a discussion of how to produce to mux'ing/working/finished/finalized/ready-to-use MPEG2 files.

Further it is to be a place where we can all trade ideas, discuss code and applications, be it for the Tivo or just for MPEG2 in general. However there are some rules for this thread.

Just like before these are rules for this thread, not the forum. If you want to discuss things deemed off limits here make your own threads and set your own rules. But if you decide to participate here then please follow the guidelines.

So the rules for this thread are:

1- Leave the flames and arguments elsewhere... Again I am interested in getting things working better and moving forward, not a re-hash of the problems covered in other threads. So here be nice or stay out.

2- We discuss ANY tools dealing with mux'ing or viewing or editing MPEG2 files or TyStreams... But let's focus on things that are built for TiVo output as this is a Tivo Forum. I am not the only one working on this, and while I intend to have my discussions of things here I have no arguments again others doing the same. If you find a tool that is better that any you have seen before, then share.

3- NO DISCUSSION OF EXTRACTION. This thread is about MUX'ing and making working MPEG2 files. To do that you have to have elementary streams. So no matter how you get them you have to have them before coming here with ideas or problems.

4- Feel free to discuss various OS wishes/desires. At some point we should support all of them or at least as many as is possible.

5- Let's limit the discussion of VSplit to how it interracts with MUX'ing rather than usability or general feature set. We have to discuss VSplit as it is the core of my current MUX'ing engine. Also in the works is a MUX'er for exisitng VSplit output that will stitch it all back together as appropriate for a tivo file that can be done long after the a/v split has been done.

6- Feel free to ask for features but be aware that I am making no promises except to work on things in general... I mean it. Ask. But don't hound me or any other author, that accomplishes nothing. If you think of something that would be cool let me know. I will add it to the list.

I would like this thread to be about the previously mentioned "technical amazement" rather than usability in my tools, ExtractStream, etc... That is what the other thread and this forum is for. Here if you find something sweet dealing with MUX'ing/editing then let's all talk about it and move forward in getting to that "perfect" point where everyone is happy.

The technical discussion of the mux'ing and what is going on behind the scenes will be held in here. Some don't care about it. If all you want to discuss is tools for extraction/splitting then go to the other threads.

So if anyone has things on their wish list for MUX'ing now is the time and this is the place.

--jdiner

chjones

11-17-2002, 09:16 PM

I suppose one of the main wishes for most SA owners (certainly for me) is 32kHz->48kHz inline audio conversion. I know you have someone working on this, Josh, but since we're now in the SA forum I thought I'd mention it one last time. Just removing one step from the overall process, but doing it *right*---exactly what everything you've done so far has seemed to do.

Edit (about 30 seconds later): Actually, I suppose I should have also mentioned 44.1kHz audio. Selfish of me. Once we are thinking of those two, is there any reason not to go to arbitrary frequencies?
CDJ

Saturn

11-17-2002, 09:29 PM

[newbie question] Could someone post the status of the various MUXing methods - pros, cons, etc. I know that jdiner is about to release a new muxing program with a new algorithm, and I know that 3rd party apps can also do the job.

I saw the 74 page thread in the DTiVo forum, but if someone who's been keeping up with everything could post the Reader's Digest version, I'd greatly appreciate it. [/newbie question]

It appears to me as if the Extraction and Splitting programs are fairly mature, but MUXing still presents some obstacles.

My ultimate goal is to retain 100% of the quality of the TiVo's recordings (i.e. avoid re-encoding), and be able to play them back on the widest variety of players (SVCD probably). If it weren't, I'd just use my video capture equipment to recapture the shows and re-encode.

jdiner

11-18-2002, 12:03 AM

Originally posted by chjones
I suppose one of the main wishes for most SA owners (certainly for me) is 32kHz->48kHz inline audio conversion. I know you have someone working on this, Josh, but since we're now in the SA forum I thought I'd mention it one last time. Just removing one step from the overall process, but doing it *right*---exactly what everything you've done so far has seemed to do.

Edit (about 30 seconds later): Actually, I suppose I should have also mentioned 44.1kHz audio. Selfish of me. Once we are thinking of those two, is there any reason not to go to arbitrary frequencies?
CDJ

Technically this is a "both" forum. But the answer to that is that the code will allow the for the arbitrary setting of both end-factors. So you can go from 32k to 44.1 or 48 and from 48 to 44.1. I have not looked at it well enough to know if it can go to 32 but doing so is... rather pointless in my mind.

I have not spent a great deal of time looking at the code. I have been trying to finish things so we can get some real testing done.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-18-2002, 12:04 AM

Originally posted by Saturn
I saw the 74 page thread in the DTiVo forum, but if someone who's been keeping up with everything could post the Reader's Digest version, I'd greatly appreciate it. [/newbie question]

Ok. There was a synopsis from me right near the end. Go to the end of the thread and then carefully page back no more than 5 pages and you will find exactly the answer you are looking for. It was 2 long-ish messages from me right in a row. If I could figure out how to get the direct URL for you I would, but it is not something I have ever bothered to figure out.

Yes, I found the summaries on Page 65, smeghead provided links above, thanks.

But there was no mention of the current state of using 3rd party tools for muxing. For reference, I only have an SA TiVo, so the DTiVo complications don't come into play for me.

jdiner, I also want to thank you for the work you've done this far. I checked out video extraction a while ago, and it seemed like it had serious problems and was very complicated to get running. Your TyTool is has made things very easy.

For now, I'm extracting over my serial / ppp connection. Very slow, but it'll be worth it if I can get my Good Eats episodes off the TiVo and onto CD-R without commercials and without re-encoding.

I guess my question really is, is this possible right now with current tools?

jdiner

11-18-2002, 03:11 AM

For an SA Tivo stream yes. Just grab it and split it.

Then mux in the right settings with tmpgenc and you are there.

If you want to cut commercials and what not it might be more problematic. I have no idea how well that is dealt with. To date most of what is going wrong is solely based on the VFR and VBR nature of the DTivo.

However, historically there have been problems which is why I have been working so hard on it all.

--jdiner

Hi8

11-18-2002, 03:40 AM

Originally posted by Saturn

For now, I'm extracting over my serial / ppp connection. Very slow, but it'll be worth it if I can get my Good Eats episodes off the TiVo and onto CD-R without commercials and without re-encoding.

I guess my question really is, is this possible right now with current tools?

Wow, can't imagine doing via serial, but if you are determined...

YES, it can be done, and I do it quite often. I'm putting each episode of Seinfeld (2 per day) on SVCD. (by the way, GOOD EATS - is one of my favorite shows!) This is done with a few 3rd party tools.

Hmmm. I have all my Good Eats episodes recorded with Best, which is way too high a bitrate for SVCD. Crap. I may end up re-encoding just to reduce the bitrate so an episode fits on a CD. I could change the bitrate with the resource editor, but that wouldn't do me any good for the many episodes I've let accumulate this far. I imagine that even if I cut the commercials, the combined audio+video would be way too big for a single CD, and I have no plans of getting a DVD burner anytime soon.

I'm using TyTool5 to do both the extracting and splitting. Is that bad?

The last issue (on compliance) to be used at your own risk. They play fine on my stand-alone hardware, but you my want to use Nero to fix things up at that point however.

Enjoy!

Can't mpeg2vcr also do the mux'ing? Does it do a poor job compared to mplex? I can't seem to find mplex available for download, and I've also seen many posts on this board of people using it and creating unviewable and uneditable mpegs. Can you post your command line, and perhaps a place to download a Windows binary of mplex?

BubbleLamp

11-18-2002, 04:13 AM

I give up, why is everyone posting to a Sticky Note? That's not their purpose.

Oh no, I just posted to it too! Circular logic will trap me here forever. ;)

jdiner

11-18-2002, 04:22 AM

I made it a sticky on purpose. I wanted it to stay at the top of the display in this forum for now. So that it would be obvious where we had all moved too during the transition.

So it is my fault. Blame me. Everyone else does. :)

--jdiner

Hi8

11-18-2002, 04:34 AM

Originally posted by Saturn

I'm using TyTool5 to do both the extracting and splitting. Is that bad?

Can't mpeg2vcr also do the mux'ing? Does it do a poor job compared to mplex? I can't seem to find mplex available for download, and I've also seen many posts on this board of people using it and creating unviewable and uneditable mpegs. Can you post your command line, and perhaps a place to download a Windows binary of mplex? [/B]

no, TyTool5 and vsplit13c - GOOD!

I never used mpeg2vcr to mux, not sure why fitting a 21min episode on SVCD would be a problem. My episodes are approx. 450m after editting. - plenty of room. You can try using Nero to "fix" the bitrate - to SVCD standard.

(edit) I mento to say I use Besweet to upsample to 44100khz

here (http://www.mpython.com/download/mplex.zip) is a copy mplex for win32

Saturn

11-18-2002, 04:43 AM

Originally posted by Hi8
no, TyTool5 and vsplit13c - GOOD!

I never used mpeg2vcr to mux, not sure why fitting a 21min episode on SVCD would be a problem. My episodes are approx. 450m after editting. - plenty of room.

here (http://www.mpython.com/download/mplex.zip) is a copy mplex for win32

Well, fitting 21 minutes onto an SVCD isn't a problem, but I was trying to do it without re-encoding and suffering a loss of quality. If I have to re-encode, I think I can just use Vegas Video Factory to do the muxing, editing, resampling of audio, and re-encoding, and I'm already familiar with the interface. Then all I have to do is burn it to CD with Nero.

21 minutes won't fit onto an SVCD at TiVo's default Best quality - 5800KB/s, IIRC. If I have to re-encode, there's a thousand different ways to do it, but I was after the holy grail, much like jdiner, to avoid re-encoding altogether.

Hi8

11-18-2002, 07:34 AM

Originally posted by Saturn

21 minutes won't fit onto an SVCD at TiVo's default Best quality - 5800KB/s, IIRC. If I have to re-encode, there's a thousand different ways to do it, but I was after the holy grail, much like jdiner, to avoid re-encoding altogether.

my BEST quality is still set for the default that my SVR-2000 came configured, that being 544X480 5.8m 32khz.

no mater how you slice it, that is not SVCD-able as is. what ever you do to the 544x480 will result in loss of quality to get to 480x480 SVCD standard. Also the other major issue is the bitrate, by getting to 2.6m another loss of quality.

I'm not sure what you intended could/would happen during those transistions - but to get to the SVCD standards quality will suffer.

I have several DVD players (Sony s7700,APEX 600a,APEX 1100w, NEXTBASE DVM4,KOSS 2163) each has it's ability to cope with "standard" formats. I've never tried, but perhaps one of them may actually play the TiVo SA BEST - format. However The problem with fitting anything worth watching time-wize on one CD-R cannot be forgotten as you stated.

It is clear you have a decision to make or should I say compromise? Because none of my players support miniDVD - my only path is SVCD which I find quite acceptable. Anything I want in the BEST quality possible I go to DVD.

jdiner

11-18-2002, 03:00 PM

Alright. Things got moved. Many thanks to whoever did it...

So we are in our new home and things should begin to progress just a bit more smoothly... At least that is the plan.

--jdiner

snoopy

11-18-2002, 05:04 PM

Jdiner, Is this not correct?

This was my understanding of one of your very recent posts in the original muxing thread... that the holes issues had been resolved and a final release was to follow. I have not seen it yet. Please correct me if I have missed something. Thanks.

mattdb

11-19-2002, 09:28 AM

Jdiner,

I was starting to panic. I thought you had abandoned ship. Wheww.... Found your thread.

Matt

Are you still working on the DTiVo here too? I couldn't find the other one in the other forum. The old one had been closed.

Could you add a note to the bottom of that one to point here?

durian

11-19-2002, 10:53 AM

Here's the printout from muxing a SA clip(-s -m) with vsplit1k or vsplit1l:

This was my understanding of one of your very recent posts in the original muxing thread... that the holes issues had been resolved and a final release was to follow. I have not seen it yet. Please correct me if I have missed something. Thanks.

No. Not even close. This is still a work in progress. Yes I closed the next major issue but there are more still to come. I have never said I was done. Don't know where you got it from. Read the messages I have posted. They detail what is to be done... And no I have not made a new release yet. I was out of town for the last 2 days. Makes it hard to work on anything.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-19-2002, 02:17 PM

Originally posted by mattdb
Jdiner,

I was starting to panic. I thought you had abandoned ship. Wheww.... Found your thread.

Matt

Are you still working on the DTiVo here too? I couldn't find the other one in the other forum. The old one had been closed.

Could you add a note to the bottom of that one to point here?

I am not sure why everyone thinks this is a Stand-Alone tivo forum. This is an extraction and processing forum. Applicable to both types of Tivos.

--jdiner

Rowan

11-19-2002, 06:50 PM

It's good to see that there is now a new home dedicated to all things extracting and muxing.

jdiner

11-20-2002, 12:07 AM

Originally posted by durian
ERROR: Out of memory getting a new MuxNode buffer!
Ok. That is bad. Basically it means a malloc failed. But to do that you have to have exhausted all physicall and virtual memory or have run out of the stack space defined for a program. Neither should happen. So... you might have a bad clip, bad in way I have never seen, or it might have been other issues.

Are you running under Windows? if so do a full shutdown and then re-try it when it all boots back up before running everything else. You just never know... :)

If you are running under linux, some other unix with a bin emulator going on, then please try it under windows to see what happens there.

If you can't tell, I really have no idea what is going wrong for you at this point. I have never seen that occur.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-20-2002, 12:54 AM

Ok. Well. Good news folks. The code I put in place for dealing with holes led me directly to the code for editing...

Now I do not have an editor in place. Nothing GUI. Nothing visual. But I do have a textual "from timestamp1 to timestamp2" cutter in place. And miracle of miracles everything still works. :)

Once I get a bit more polish on it, we have the first cut of a way to remove lead-in, lead-out, commercials, and unwanted segments. :)

Not sure what to do next. To start the GUI. Or to build a better text cutter interface...

But I am excited. It works. Perfectly... :) You just gotta love it when that happens.

NOTE: I still have not gotten to the reseting PTS issue yet. I got a bit sidetracked...

I intend to make a release before getting to that next big issue. I was just excited and had to tell people.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-20-2002, 12:57 AM

Oh, and I suppose I should mention. That once I got the hole code done. The changes to the mux'ing engine to handle the cutting were 25 lines of C source code.

Now that kind of thing is what happens when you design and build and rebuild and rebuild this stuff until it is right... :)

--jdiner

dlang

11-20-2002, 01:42 AM

Great!!!

by the way we don't need no stinkin GUI for the editing :)

give us something that works with a text editor and I'll bet you will have a dozen or so GUI's that work with it within a week

seriously I think it would be a good idea to let people try useing it as is for a little bit and then they can suggest improvements to the text interface, let's not cast it in stone anytime soon.

digitalAir

11-20-2002, 03:13 AM

just curious...

do timestamp1 and timestamp2 have to be GOP boundaries?

if not, does it round to the nearest, or what?

jdiner

11-20-2002, 03:19 AM

Originally posted by dlang
Great!!!

by the way we don't need no stinkin GUI for the editing :)

give us something that works with a text editor and I'll bet you will have a dozen or so GUI's that work with it within a week

seriously I think it would be a good idea to let people try useing it as is for a little bit and then they can suggest improvements to the text interface, let's not cast it in stone anytime soon.
My thoughts exactly.

Anyone can write that part of it. Well ok anyone with a bit of talent for the game. But yeah. So I figure for now the text interface will stick.

I actually posted what I did hoping that some of the people that have offered to help write code recently would well... offer to write that part... :)

Right now it is 2 timestamps per line indicating a cut. I.e.

start end

or

00:52:18.932 00:55:18.932

to cut the very end of a stream starting at 52 minutes 18 seconds up to and including 55 minutes 18 seconds... Hummm. You know I never thought of it. But the cut times are in stream time. Which changes for every stream and has a different starting point... I can print out where a stream start very quickly. Ack... There is a problem there. Whoever winds up doing the GUI is going to have to be aware of a few things from the stream. Oh well. Guess it will be a bit more troublesome than I thought.

Any GUI volunteers want to jump on the bandwagon?

--jdiner

jdiner

11-20-2002, 03:24 AM

Originally posted by digitalAir
just curious...

do timestamp1 and timestamp2 have to be GOP boundaries?

if not, does it round to the nearest, or what?
It turns out that many of us where right in what we guessed for cutting way way way back when.

It can be used to cut on a millisecond boundry not just on a GOP boundry. Do keep in mind that that is only a cut point. Meaning a frame is not shown for less time nor is half of it displayed. It is either all there or all not there etc... I have used it to cut at a GOP boundry and between 2 b-frames.

As was guessed at, by edpuffmonster IIRC, so long ago there is a small almost unnoticable glitch in the video to me it was not worth worrying about getting any better.

As for the rest of it I am just cleaning things up now and should have a test version out real soon.

I know I know. I have said that before. But hey in the end I always deliver so please, be patient.

--jdiner

dlang

11-20-2002, 03:33 AM

unfortunantly I don't have the time right now to write a full GUI, but a series of scripts that grabbed 1 sec of video every min, displayed it then asked you if it was show/commercial/unknown, repeated a larger clip around the unknown, then narrowed down the transition from commercial to program, then produced a final mpeg with all the commercials cut out of it is within my time budget (for speed I will probably just set it up to run from a linux SVGA/VESA console not useing X at all)

not the fanciest interface around, but it should get the job done

FreydNot

11-20-2002, 03:33 AM

Once you have released the new text based cutting I'll probably try using M2-edit to generate an edit decision list. It will be pretty easy to make an excel spreadsheet to account for the first frame being non-zero.

I see the server takes a single start and end point. Is the intention for the client to stitch together several pieces? Or will the server eventually take a multi-part list?

PS, when the threads moved my email notifications stoped working. I thought things were just quiet until I came back and poked around.

jdiner

11-20-2002, 03:36 AM

Rather than wait. Here it is... Not fully cleaned up. And not configurable yet. But something for others to see what I am talking about with the editing.

At the moment:

- It does not take an external file for cut points.
- It has 1 cut built in internally from 5-10 seconds from the start of the clip wherever it is.
- It still only processes a small chunk of the file (2000 chunks).
- It contains the code needed to work around the following types of holes:

1- Audio only.
2- Video only.
3- Where the audio and video are gone from the same timeframe range.
4- Where the audio and video are gone from overlapping segments.

I couldn't think of another case to test so for now I am considering the hole problem closed.

This is still just a quick peek/test version. What you need to do is the following:

1- Locate your small test clip.
2- Run it through 1L and save the output.
3- Run it through 1M and save the output.
4- Play output-1L and see how and where it works etc...
5- Play output-1m and notice the cut from the 5 to 10 second marks.
6- Be suitably amazed.
7- Go find spouse and show them, pretend to accept their amazement at face value.
8- Ignore muttering as they walk away shaking head... :)

--jdiner

jdiner

11-20-2002, 03:43 AM

Originally posted by FreydNot
I see the server takes a single start and end point. Is the intention for the client to stitch together several pieces? Or will the server eventually take a multi-part list?

PS, when the threads moved my email notifications stoped working. I thought things were just quiet until I came back and poked around.

I was afraid that the quiteness might mean people were not following it. Perhaps a post to the original forum saying we are not gone, just moved to here. I used to just right into the DTivo fourm rather than going from the home page in. I suspect others do the same thing.

As for the server. What do you mean? My server? It takes all of the FSIDs or conversely just the chosen FSIDs based on what button is hit. But that is TyTool. For VSplit, this tool, there is no server. It just takes the file and goes.

As for how the client would work I figure at some point I will still do what I was thinking before.

- Add a feature to the server to get just the I_Frames and related timestamp information.
- Add have a new client/window in TyTool that will take this output and create a cut list from it.
- Use this cut-list in whatever fashion while downloading the full thing and mux'ing.

Overall this seems like it would work. If the cut-lists could be saved to disk then you could mark the cut points in several shows very quickly and then do the longer more drawn out download/split/cut/mux process on several shows without user intervention. Yeah. I like that idea. :)

--jdiner

FreydNot

11-20-2002, 03:53 AM

Ya, I was thinking about the tytool situation. Ignore my references to client and server.

Since you aren't limited to cutting on I frames, I could see a problem trying to add two (or more) cut out pieces together. Unless the second piece starts with an I frame there could be trouble. Maybe the easiest way to deal with this would be to keep the segements as individual pieces and don't try to make one big file.

I'm down with queuing up a bunch of cut lists and letting it run over night. In fact, I like your whole approach to the problem. Seems practical and useful.

durian

11-20-2002, 08:31 AM

Rather than wait. Here it is... Not fully cleaned up. And not configurable yet. But something for others to see what I am talking about with the editing.

Really looking foward to "2 timestamps per line indicating a cut"!!!!
:D

durian

11-20-2002, 11:28 AM

Originally posted by jdiner
Ok. That is bad. Basically it means a malloc failed. But to do that you have to have exhausted all physicall and virtual memory or have run out of the stack space defined for a program. Neither should happen. So... you might have a bad clip, bad in way I have never seen, or it might have been other issues.

Are you running under Windows? if so do a full shutdown and then re-try it when it all boots back up before running everything else. You just never know... :)

If you are running under linux, some other unix with a bin emulator going on, then please try it under windows to see what happens there.

If you can't tell, I really have no idea what is going wrong for you at this point. I have never seen that occur.

--jdiner

Done all that. It segfaults on linux. Furthermore, the clip that I am about to upload to you is at the very beginning of a show, so allocation errors are odd. Consequently, I thought that this might be an artifact of tytool -- thus the subject of my post.

I tried 1m on it and it seems to process it fine, except that PowerDVD cannot play it (quits with errors), although WinDVD can.

jdiner

11-20-2002, 12:29 PM

Originally posted by durian
Done all that. It segfaults on linux. Furthermore, the clip that I am about to upload to you is at the very beginning of a show, so allocation errors are odd. Consequently, I thought that this might be an artifact of tytool -- thus the subject of my post.

I tried 1m on it and it seems to process it fine, except that PowerDVD cannot play it (quits with errors), although WinDVD can.

Ok. That is wierd. I would like to take a look at the TyStream file. This would be the first thing that PowerDVD can't play that is being outputed by the latest mux'ing code that I have seen. I might have missed a corner case or it might be something else altogether. At this point I can't say.

--jdiner

mpauley

11-20-2002, 12:31 PM

jdiner -

Just wanted to let you know if you need any help with a GUI, let me know.

-mp

jdiner

11-20-2002, 12:32 PM

Ok. One further note. I had intended to mention this and then I forgot. There is an issue dealing with playback if there is a hole. It is a playback issue and not a Vsplit/muxing issue.

If you get a single stream hole, either audio or video, that is < 3 seconds in length then both PowerDVD and WinDVD will skip the duration of the hole. They beging playback again where the hole ended. This is most noticable by a quick just across the gap and then what appears to be a 1/8 to a 1/4 of a second pause before playback resumes.

I have no idea why they would treat a gap this way. For a 4 second+ gap playback continues normally you just don't get the missing stream. So if anyone should see this it is not a bug in my code. Just a decision by authors of these other tools.

--jdiner

snoopy

11-20-2002, 12:41 PM

Most older DVD players will play "regular" VCD's comprised of mpeg1 level encoding as opposed to mpeg2. The information is correct according to all the information I have read recently. I would like to create VCD's instead of SVCD's obtained by using the -d switch in vsplit. Is there any plans for such an option so that the disk will play in almost any machine until I can afford an expensive DVD burner?

jdiner

11-20-2002, 12:41 PM

Originally posted by Fugg
I tried vsplit1m on a basic sa file I had laying around at work...

5 sec in, 5 sec cut... it was perfect!

Really looking foward to "2 timestamps per line indicating a cut"!!!!
:D
It was in there. Or perhaps I should say, after a fashion it was in there. I was in the middle of rebuilding it to be more production ready, I had a typical RAD prototype of the code which would not hold up under production use. Anyway, I figured rather than seem a tease and mention in and then put nothing out for awhile I would release a simple test version that would showcase the new feature. And so 1M was born. :)

Anyway, I am working on a few things this morning and should have more news later in the day.

--jdiner

Kythorn

11-20-2002, 01:07 PM

Originally posted by jdiner

If you get a single stream hole, either audio or video, that is < 3 seconds in length then both PowerDVD and WinDVD will skip the duration of the hole. They beging playback again where the hole ended. This is most noticable by a quick just across the gap and then what appears to be a 1/8 to a 1/4 of a second pause before playback resumes.
--jdiner

Shouldn't be a problem with the kind of holes I get from off the locals spot beam...

Rowan

11-20-2002, 01:18 PM

Originally posted by jdiner
Ok. One further note. I had intended to mention this and then I forgot. There is an issue dealing with playback if there is a hole. It is a playback issue and not a Vsplit/muxing issue.

If you get a single stream hole, either audio or video, that is < 3 seconds in length then both PowerDVD and WinDVD will skip the duration of the hole. They beging playback again where the hole ended. This is most noticable by a quick just across the gap and then what appears to be a 1/8 to a 1/4 of a second pause before playback resumes.

I have no idea why they would treat a gap this way. For a 4 second+ gap playback continues normally you just don't get the missing stream. So if anyone should see this it is not a bug in my code. Just a decision by authors of these other tools.

--jdiner

In the case were the audio has a hole would it not be possible to just fill it in with silence, this should allow the video to keep playing but with no audio?

Rowan

Pr.Sinister

11-20-2002, 02:05 PM

Originally posted by snoopy
Most older DVD players will play "regular" VCD's comprised of mpeg1 level encoding as opposed to mpeg2. The information is correct according to all the information I have read recently. I would like to create VCD's instead of SVCD's obtained by using the -d switch in vsplit. Is there any plans for such an option so that the disk will play in almost any machine until I can afford an expensive DVD burner?

To get an MPEG-1 VCD File, you'll have to transcode the output
of the Mux or take the elementary streams and transcode those.

The DirecTiVo creates MPEG-2 files. The -d just says to MUX with
a specific sector size and add a SVCD header. There is no way
of muxing to VCD.

VCD Standard is MPEG-1, 1150kbps
SVCD Standard is MPEG-2, 2520kbps (althought i can pretty much
be anything).

Bottom line : You have to transcode to get MPEG-1 or you can
use a header trick but that doesn't work on all players.

-Pr.

snoopy

11-20-2002, 02:16 PM

Originally posted by Pr.Sinister
To get an MPEG-1 VCD File, you'll have to transcode the output
of the Mux or take the elementary streams and transcode those.

The DirecTiVo creates MPEG-2 files. The -d just says to MUX with
a specific sector size and add a SVCD header. There is no way
of muxing to VCD.

VCD Standard is MPEG-1, 1150kbps
SVCD Standard is MPEG-2, 2520kbps (althought i can pretty much
be anything).

Bottom line : You have to transcode to get MPEG-1 or you can
use a header trick but that doesn't work on all players.

-Pr.

What would you use to accomplish this "transcoding" process to MPEG-1 VCD Standard? I probably won't attempt the header trick until I get a real one to work properly. Thanks.

tlphipps

11-20-2002, 03:13 PM

Bottom line : You have to transcode to get MPEG-1 or you can

Wouldn't the point of doing VCD be to include more on the cd. If you just trick the player into thinking it's playing a VCD when it's actually playing an SVCD, you don't accomplish any space savings?

Am I just missing something here?

snoopy

11-20-2002, 03:20 PM

Originally posted by tlphipps
Wouldn't the point of doing VCD be to include more on the cd. If you just trick the player into thinking it's playing a VCD when it's actually playing an SVCD, you don't accomplish any space savings?

Am I just missing something here?

The point would be to allow an older DVD to play the file. By "older", I mean one that does not play SVCD's.

Does anyone know what program I can use to "transcode" the mpeg2 file to be mpeg1 ? I try TMPEnc but I don't understand it well enough to set it to do that. What gives

jdiner

11-20-2002, 03:29 PM

Originally posted by snoopy
Most older DVD players will play "regular" VCD's comprised of mpeg1 level encoding as opposed to mpeg2. The information is correct according to all the information I have read recently. I would like to create VCD's instead of SVCD's obtained by using the -d switch in vsplit. Is there any plans for such an option so that the disk will play in almost any machine until I can afford an expensive DVD burner?
They are 2 completely different thing. I would have to build and encoder and a decoder (encoder for mpeg-1 and decoder for mpeg-2) into the system to make it happen.

For me this is never going to happen. I don't want it. No one else that knew what was going on would either. It is a waste of time.

A waste of time because there are already better tools out there that do this. Going back to mpeg-1 is a re-encode step. You lose quality. You have drop the bit rate massively from what it is, and so you lose quality massively.

Go to wal-mart. Get out your wallet and buy a $49 apex. My friend just did and it will play stuff from the DTivo/SATivo wonderfully.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-20-2002, 03:31 PM

Originally posted by Pr.Sinister
Bottom line : You have to transcode to get MPEG-1 or you can
use a header trick but that doesn't work on all players.

There is honestly no header trick that will work for 99% of the players. The encoding of mpeg-2 is different at the encoding layer than mpeg-1. I could mux to mpeg-1 headers but nothing would play. Because nothing is as it should be...

It is like putting sand in shoe boxes and claiming the sand is now shoes. Not hardly...

--jdiner

jdiner

11-20-2002, 03:34 PM

Originally posted by snoopy
The point would be to allow an older DVD to play the file. By "older", I mean one that does not play SVCD's.

Does anyone know what program I can use to "transcode" the mpeg2 file to be mpeg1 ? I try TMPEnc but I don't understand it well enough to set it to do that. What gives

We should have just started here. A player that will not play SVCDs does not have the mpeg-2 system built in such a way to accept generic mpeg-2 files. They must match the DVD specs perfectly. These players also tend to have problems with slightly non-standard DVDs.

You have to convert, i.e. transcode, from mpeg-2 to mpeg-1. Download a demo copy of tmpgenc. It does this and has a nice newbie wizard interface. The demo used to be good for 30 days no idea now. Once you try it if you like it support them and buy it.

But for now let's consider the topic closed. It has nothing to do with mux'ing and dealing with mux'ed files. It is about VCD and that has nothing to do with what is going on in here. Make another thread...

--jdiner

alunj

11-20-2002, 05:18 PM

Tested 1m on UK SA 2.5.5 . Looks good. Sync Good
Some noise on cut ! But good sync

A

jdiner

11-20-2002, 08:02 PM

Originally posted by alunj
Tested 1m on UK SA 2.5.5 . Looks good. Sync Good
Some noise on cut ! But good sync

Yeah. There will be. Always unless it is a perfect GOP cut but that means re-ordering frames and there is no garantee that will work right either. How much noise all depends on nature of the stream.

The only other way to get rid of the noise is to re-encode a few frames. And while that is possible not something I plan to do as what is there is good enough for me.

--jdiner

Rowan

11-20-2002, 08:57 PM

Originally posted by jdiner
Yeah. There will be. Always unless it is a perfect GOP cut but that means re-ordering frames and there is no garantee that will work right either. How much noise all depends on nature of the stream.

The only other way to get rid of the noise is to re-encode a few frames. And while that is possible not something I plan to do as what is there is good enough for me.

--jdiner

One other way to fix that is to re-encode that last frame before the cut and then the first frame after the cut to ramp the audio down to silence and then back up to the normal sound.

But now re-reading you post I think that is what you said.

Rowan

skorous

11-20-2002, 09:36 PM

Originally posted by jdiner

The only other way to get rid of the noise is to re-encode a few frames. And while that is possible not something I plan to do as what is there is good enough for me.

--jdiner

Out of curiousity, are there any tools that can do the re-encoding on a range where the cut is going to be committed? I doubt the noise will bother me but my curiousity ie piqued. <grin>

Skorous

Pr.Sinister

11-20-2002, 10:08 PM

Originally posted by snoopy
What would you use to accomplish this "transcoding" process to MPEG-1 VCD Standard? I probably won't attempt the header trick until I get a real one to work properly. Thanks.

In TMPGEnc, just go into the Project Wizard and choose
NTSC under Video-CD

Click Next, Drag & Drop or use the file browser to add
your m2v and m2a files and the other steps should all be
Next, next, next, etc... very easy... Depending on your CPU
power, i could take anywhere from 30mins to 7 hours..

hehehe

-Pr.

jdiner

11-20-2002, 10:14 PM

Originally posted by skorous
Out of curiousity, are there any tools that can do the re-encoding on a range where the cut is going to be committed? I doubt the noise will bother me but my curiousity ie piqued. <grin>

The answer is "yes and no"... :) Fundamentally it is just an MPEG-2 encoder that is needed. But you need to get the uncompressed frames and then encode only a few frames.

What you would do is turn them into I-frames so that there is no prediction. This will make them substantially bigger. But it will give you a perfect cut.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-20-2002, 10:17 PM

Ok. I supose I should have elaborated on why I consider what I have "enough".

Most of what I am interested in is TV shows. The ones I have all fade to black over half dozen frames and then fade back in from black over a half dozen.

I cut from the end of the black fade out, to the start of the black fade in, and bingo, the noise video wise is almost none existant. This will not always be possible. But by and large it will work. :)

However to do it at that level is something of a challenge for the GUI needed to pull it all off.

--jdiner

Kythorn

11-20-2002, 10:36 PM

re: powerdvd/windvd playback oddness with 'holes'. I got bored and decided to play with the output of 1m on my dvd players, and both of them seem to not care whether the hole was 4 frames or 4 seconds, they just play the part of the stream they do have.

Afreey 2060 ld and the el cheapo apex from walmart.

They exhibit the tearing I'd expect from the cutting on non gop boundaries, but as long as it doesn't completely puke, I don't especially care.

I'm trying to see what happens when I fast forward or rewind over the gap, but it's pretty hard to tell when it's 5 seconds from the beginning. I'll test this more when we can define our own cuts.

skorous

11-20-2002, 10:51 PM

Originally posted by jdiner
The answer is "yes and no"... :) Fundamentally it is just an MPEG-2 encoder that is needed. But you need to get the uncompressed frames and then encode only a few frames.

What you would do is turn them into I-frames so that there is no prediction. This will make them substantially bigger. But it will give you a perfect cut.

--jdiner

Can you ("you" being a generic term for any end-user) convert frames over a limited timeframe? If so, you could convert a dozen frames or so at each cut to get the perfect cut. That shouldn't make a large difference in size, should it?

Oh, and I guess I should ask if you might have seen a mythical beast capable of doing this? :)

Skorous

jdiner

11-20-2002, 11:17 PM

Originally posted by skorous
Can you ("you" being a generic term for any end-user) convert frames over a limited timeframe? If so, you could convert a dozen frames or so at each cut to get the perfect cut. That shouldn't make a large difference in size, should it?

Oh, and I guess I should ask if you might have seen a mythical beast capable of doing this? :)

Ok. I can dump any number of frames to an external file. Perhaps down the road that is what should be done. Rather than doing any encoding myself. Dump the 5 frames that are required and then spawn off a call to an external compressor something with a nice API and then reload and mux using those new replacement frames and the original timestamp values.

Then we could get perfect seemless cuts. The audio is not a problem as it does not have any prediction going on.

Anyone know of there is an external API to tmpgenc or any of the other compressor tools?

--jdiner

skorous

11-21-2002, 01:04 AM

JD,

Just so it's clear I'm not looking for any features to be added to vsplit though I appreciate the willingness. I'm perfectly happy with an additional step or two to create perfect cuts if indeed it bothers me as I'm the one being neurotic. :) Since I haven't even seen the cut noise (been busy) I'm only seeking information as to whether it can be fixed if it _does_ bother me. I'm just ecstatic to not have to deal with lipsync issues and I had a bugger of a time with that. Most of my machines were really erratic so I'd wind up encoding things a half dozen times before I got it right. A few steps for perfect cuts is kid stuff. <big grin>

That being said, am I correct in assuming that I could use TMpgEnc's Merge and Cut feature to cut a show into, for simplicities sake, 3 parts : before commercials, commercials + the black fade frames before and after, after commercials. Then re-encode the commercials section with TmpgEnc into solely I-frames, make my cut, and merge 'em back together again? How would that be affected by the VFR nature of DTivo? < joke > Not that I care since I'm a lowly SA owner < /joke > but it'll probably come up as part of someone elses curiousity.

Skorous

sirfergy

11-21-2002, 01:57 AM

Question. Is one of the goals of the splitting.muxing to eliminate temporal references? If I am seeing them, do you want to know about them?

Thanks

jdiner

11-21-2002, 03:53 AM

Originally posted by sirfergy
Question. Is one of the goals of the splitting.muxing to eliminate temporal references? If I am seeing them, do you want to know about them?

I am so sick of this stupid question. Mux'ing has nothing to do with temporal reference issues. There are some tools most notably Spruce Up that for some insane reason checks that field while doing it's conversion into a VOB. While this includes a mux'ing step this check has nothing to do with that.

The error in the simplest terms is the field order within a frame. A single image is made up of lots of tiny little segments of a picture. Each segment has it's own start code and contains data formatted in the mpeg-2 mode.

Every now and again for some unknown reason DTV send these out in "the wrong order". Instead of being 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc... It is 1, 2, 4, 3, 5, 6...

This order-by-number is not defined in the specs. As near as I can tell Spruce Up just liked it this way. Although it might be a DVD spec thing... The data in the file can be "re-organized" to work with what was coming. A simple sort is enough. while complex to add due to the nature of the data alignment. At times I have also seen missing segments that could cause this same error.

Spruce Up's stopping on it is just plain stupid. At the very worst case "with bad hardware" it would cause 1 incorrectly rendered frame. That is all....

There is not much that I can do however to make things work for the Spruce Up program itself. Read all of the messages on why we even need to mux things in the first place to understand why. All of the work I am doing right is for the sole purpose of NOT NEEDING TO USE IT OR OTHER TOOLS LIKE IT.

I can't believe anyone even tries. It is a steaming pile of crap. I have tried to do a half a dozen different things with it. Not once has it worked start to finish, it crashes continuously, and well... most of the rest is just a rant.

So no. I am not going to be elminating them. I am going to be trying to get rid of the need for programs that care about them in the first place.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-21-2002, 03:58 AM

Originally posted by skorous
JD,

Just so it's clear I'm not looking for any features to be added to vsplit though I appreciate the willingness.
It would be a down the road type of thing. I was just giving a quick thought to what could be done to have a more seemless cut. But 5-6 frames would be more than enough.

As for overall space from the previous message an I frame from DTV is about 60k on average, a P frame about 30 and a B frame about a 20k. So overall if there were 6 cuts:

- Lead-in
- 4 commercial breaks
- Lead-out

You would increase about what 500k? Or so?

As for what would happen. It would fail. If the 6 frames at the end were part of the VFR nature.

1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 etc...

Then creating them elsewhere and trying just through them in would generate:

1 1 1 1 1 etc...

They would have to be made, and then handed back to the mux'er which would use the first set of timestamps and get:

1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 etc...

It would just be I I I I for the frames instead of P B B P B B and so on.

--jdiner

skorous

11-21-2002, 09:49 AM

It would be a down the road type of thing. I was just giving a quick thought to what could be done to have a more seemless cut. But 5-6 frames would be more than enough.

Cool. I just like to maintain my non-obnoxious status. ;)

As for overall space from the previous message an I frame from DTV is about 60k on average, a P frame about 30 and a B frame about a 20k. So overall if there were 6 cuts:
- Lead-in
- 4 commercial breaks
- Lead-out

You would increase about what 500k? Or so?

Ok, 500k isn't that bad. It's noticeable but when you think about a half a meg versus a 650M/700M it's not that bad.

As for what would happen. It would fail.

Yeah, that's kinda what I figured. Cool, thanks for the info.

Skorous

stealthdave

11-21-2002, 04:39 PM

I have a simple feature request. :) Can a you add a flag to pipe the muxed output to stdout rather than a file? You would probably have to redirect the currently copious logging messages to a file or stderr (I believe that it is currently going to stdout), but there would be many advantages to this. i.e, piping a muxed stream directly into a transcoding utility. :)

I'm a web developer, so among other uses, I can see using this as a way to watch a program on the TiVo remotely by transcoding the stream in real-time to a low-bitrate MPEG-4 stream and stream it over the web. You would need a dedicated server to do this, but the processing power to do it in real-time is fairly cheap these days. The limiting factor would actually be the TiVo's network connection speed.

Anyway, that was a very off-topic explanation of why I would like the ability to pipe the muxed output to stdout. :)

- Stealth Dave

snoopy

11-21-2002, 05:59 PM

Originally posted by stealthdave
I have a simple feature request. :) Can a you add a flag to pipe the muxed output to stdout rather than a file? You would probably have to redirect the currently copious logging messages to a file or stderr (I believe that it is currently going to stdout), but there would be many advantages to this. i.e, piping a muxed stream directly into a transcoding utility. :)

I'm a web developer, so among other uses, I can see using this as a way to watch a program on the TiVo remotely by transcoding the stream in real-time to a low-bitrate MPEG-4 stream and stream it over the web. You would need a dedicated server to do this, but the processing power to do it in real-time is fairly cheap these days. The limiting factor would actually be the TiVo's network connection speed.

Anyway, that was a very off-topic explanation of why I would like the ability to pipe the muxed output to stdout. :)

- Stealth Dave

WOW! Heck of an idea :)

jdiner

11-21-2002, 05:59 PM

Originally posted by stealthdave
I have a simple feature request. :) Can a you add a flag to pipe the muxed output to stdout rather than a file? You would probably have to redirect the currently copious logging messages to a file or stderr (I believe that it is currently going to stdout), but there would be many advantages to this. i.e, piping a muxed stream directly into a transcoding utility. :)

You can't transcode the output of a DTivo stream. The SATivo should work but the DTivo won't. For the same reason as has been mentioned before. The system reports a frame rate that isn't real.

Or perhaps I should say that none of my attmepts at transcoding have worked out.

--jdiner

AlphaWolf

11-21-2002, 06:38 PM

jdiner: faye was working on doing just this, and I believe she was saying its possible to do it with a directivo stream. She was converting the tystreams strait to a transport stream. I haven't heard from her in a long time though.

abcdriver

11-21-2002, 06:49 PM

Why do people insist on having sig's longer than their posts?
:confused:

RxMan

11-21-2002, 07:05 PM

Why does someone with 2 posts think he knows anything about one of the most respected members of this board?

Let's keep this on topic.

stealthdave

11-21-2002, 08:18 PM

Originally posted by jdiner
You can't transcode the output of a DTivo stream. The SATivo should work but the DTivo won't.

It just so happens that I have an SA TiVo. :)

- Stealth Dave

otakucode

11-23-2002, 12:31 AM

At what point in the timeline of development (feature wise, referring to your status update posts from the other thread talking about VOB generation and such) are you planning on releasing a version that processes a full stream? If I've missed a release that does this, please forgive my idiocy. The status update posts made it sound like a full version was out, but I couldn't find a release and then I saw your release of the version with the cutting ability that again only functioned on a small part, so I'm taking that as a hint that no version that runs for an entire stream has been made public yet... so if I'm right and no such version has been released, I was just wondering if that was going to be a "last step" or what? I know its really a choice of when you want to deal with the resetting PTS values and other bugs that are inevitably bound to crop up, so I'm just wondering when you've chosen to take up that sword ;)

OtakuCODE

FredThompson

11-23-2002, 04:06 AM

Originally posted by jdiner
Ok. I can dump any number of frames to an external file. Perhaps down the road that is what should be done. Rather than doing any encoding myself. Dump the 5 frames that are required and then spawn off a call to an external compressor something with a nice API and then reload and mux using those new replacement frames and the original timestamp values.

Then we could get perfect seemless cuts. The audio is not a problem as it does not have any prediction going on.

Anyone know of there is an external API to tmpgenc or any of the other compressor tools?

--jdiner
Why don't you just take the reference code that's available and use it? Speed won't really be an issue because you're only talking about a few frames.

It's linked in the MPEG section of my sig. I'm INCREDIBLY interested in perfect edits (TLC and Discovery don't do long fades that often) so here 'tis:

ftp://mm-ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/multimedia/mpeg2/software

I've stumbled on some other freely-usable source so let me know if you need something else. I'll happily go digging.

FredThompson

11-23-2002, 04:31 AM

That link is a dog. Here's the source code.

jdiner

11-24-2002, 05:04 PM

Originally posted by FredThompson
Why don't you just take the reference code that's available and use it? Speed won't really be an issue because you're only talking about a few frames.
I will have to have a look see at the source code. The reason I didn't want to use the reference source I have is that it is liscenced such that we could never, even with free tools use it. And it was crap. Not just big frames as the problem but bad frames. Very bad.

If this is better on both counts I have no issues with using it. I would also like perfect cuts. I really would. I am as much a fan of that as anyone here. But I also know how much work is involved in all of this. And comparing the work needed to do my own versus what we have already... I kind of have the feeling of "why bother" on doing better cuts. But that is just me.

--jdiner

fredisdead

11-24-2002, 11:54 PM

Jdiner:

As I understand from your recent post, Temporal Reference errors are a result of bad data in the dtivo stream.

However, I have had two ty streams which generate Temoral Reference Errors in DVDMaestro when split with vsplit13c, but do not have the errors when split with the earlier vsplit13.

There are a few OOB's in the subject streams, but no holes reported (no vidbody off messages).

The subject streams play fine with no sync problems on the final burned DVD-R's.

jdiner

11-25-2002, 12:27 AM

Originally posted by fredisdead
Jdiner:

As I understand from your recent post, Temporal Reference errors are a result of bad data in the dtivo stream.

However, I have had two ty streams which generate Temoral Reference Errors in DVDMaestro when split with vsplit13c, but do not have the errors when split with the earlier vsplit13.

There are a few OOB's in the subject streams, but no holes reported (no vidbody off messages).

The subject streams play fine with no sync problems on the final burned DVD-R's.

If you can find them in the stream cut them for me. I am not sure what is going on. But I have gone to far one way or the other in adding or removing what looked like bad data.

It should not be happening.

And again it is not bad data it is out of order data... However if I am cutting something I should not be then we would infact potentially be getting out of order data.

i.e. 1-1 1-2 1-3 [cut goes here] 2-5 2-6

and this looks likes out of order data...

--jdiner

jdiner

11-25-2002, 01:30 AM

I mentioned again recently in response to questions and comments from others the VFR nature of the DTivo/DTV video stream.

To try and help clarify once again what is going on attached is a text file that shows the video frame count and the data sizes segmented by seconds. 1 line per second.

First line means: 29 frames in that seconds worth of video with a total of 488k for just the video data.

Second line means: 31 frames for the 2nd second of video with a total of 519k of data for the 31 frames.

Third line means: 28 frames of video at 289k of data.

And so on...

The Variable Bit Rate (VBR)is quite obvious ranging from 519k to 277k in just the first 4 seconds of output.

The VFR is also obvious. 29 then 31 then 28 then 25. Look at the entire text file to see that the pattern just keeps going in that same vein. Now at every point along the way the output is reporting that it is 29.97 frames per second. If only... :)

This is again why custom mux'ing is needed. And why movies work and regular episodic TV rarely does. The movie clips I have report themselves as 24fps and the average, again cutting out the lead-in and lead-out segments, is 24. Almost perfectly so.

So there will be slight drift using another mux'er but not bad if all is well.

If anyone would like to check this out for themselves on their own clips grab the latest (1N) version of vsplit and run it with the -v (NOT -V) flag. For level 1 verbosity. Then grep for "MUXV:" in the output. It will generate for you the same file as I have attached here.

For movies check the lead-in. Probably fluctuating, then settles down the show itself.

For TV shows it will most likely fluctuate wildly from start to finish.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-25-2002, 01:35 AM

To continue my last post for the SA Tivos...

Attached is an SA Tivo output from an episode of Lois and Clark.

MUXV: This much video in the Q: 21 nodes && (720015 bytes)
MUXV: This much video in the Q: 23 nodes && (788060 bytes)
MUXV: This much video in the Q: 23 nodes && (786240 bytes)
MUXV: This much video in the Q: 23 nodes && (787080 bytes)

Note the smaller first frame this is the cut of the 2 lead-in B-Frames from the previous GOP.

Then almost everything is 23's. The reason this is 23 and not 29-30 is that the code I am using just counts nodes not the frames in them. On the DTivo 1 frame per node. On the SA Tivo the B frame followed by the P frame is put into the same record on the Tivo.

But the output stays almost perfect all the way through. The imperfections are my display code rather than the stream.

Also noet the sizes. While not perfect this is CBR... 788, 786, 787 and so on. Nice and steady bit rate... :)

--jdiner

jdiner

11-25-2002, 01:49 AM

Alright folks here it. Version 1N of the MUX'er.

This release has the following key things in it:

1- The mux'er has been further cleaned up and it is marginally faster now than before.

2- The system requires more memory. In dealing with holes things now take a bit more ram. Not substantial but the need is there.

3- The full stream is mux'ed out. Before the ending pieces were chopped off even with the length limits.

4- The temporary mux'ing buffers are now flushed to the file at the very end of the run.

5- These building buffers are now padded to be a full mpeg-2 sector in size. Amazing the kinds of fireworks this one caused. :)

6- The MUXA: and MUVX: lines were moved to show during the -v level of debugging output. These show how much data was collected for each second for both video and audio. Just a way to check the VFR and VBR...

7- Other sundry small fixes were added. Every time I go through the mux'ing I find something. :( Sadly this time it was if there was a full second of video and no audio (i.e. a hole) it caused vsplit to error out. This has been fixed.

8- The "cut" from 5-10 seconds has been removed.

9- It is still limited to 2000 chunks. But this phase is coming to and end. If there are not any major problems then it means that mux'ing is going as needed and we can deal with the last stages of the VOB and editing...

--jdiner

jdiner

11-25-2002, 03:57 AM

Ok. I have the code built to create the editing I-Frame key file.

Any takers on building the GUI before I get started on it? There is other stuff for me to do so I am serious. If anyone wants to start the editing GUI that would be great with me.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-25-2002, 04:03 AM

Don't you just hate it when you think what you are doing is the best way and they you get the thought bubbling up from the back brain that will make it all better? :)

I expect that I can make the mux'er 5-10% faster again. Was just kind of being dumb about buffer management.

--jdiner

JasonJLee

11-25-2002, 11:37 AM

Jdiner,

I'll have a go at a gui..

I'm on a clients site rebuilding a mirrored server at the mo(taking forever, giving me time to checkup on this board), but I'll be around later.

I have trouble sleeping lately, so I have lots of time to code. (10am fri till 7am on saturday.. 21 Hours straight).

I'm only good for windows ATM though, that might be a problem.

PM me if your interested.

If not I do have one idea, which I have stated before, but I'm not sure if it helps, as I don't know in detail how your code works.

If we know that add breaks are at least 60 seconds long for example, we only need to take stills every 59 seconds on so...

Which means 1 still per minute rather than per iframe.

Then zero in on the iframes for that minute, and get the cut closer.

Then we have a cutlist.

Anyway, Servers at 90% so I'm packing up. Hope this helps!

J

AlphaWolf

11-25-2002, 12:19 PM

IMO you should write a front end spec and just distribute a command line only binary, this way it would be easy to have GUIs written for either windows or linux, and us command line jockeys don't have to run X servers where they aren't necessary :D

jdiner

11-25-2002, 03:11 PM

Originally posted by AlphaWolf
IMO you should write a front end spec and just distribute a command line only binary, this way it would be easy to have GUIs written for either windows or linux, and us command line jockeys don't have to run X servers where they aren't necessary :D
Exactly my plan. I wasn't clear enough but I was just getting started...

What I have right now:

1- A version of vsplit that can be run through a TyStream file. It outputs the actual time stamp and each I-Frame from within the file. Thus correct timestamps for a cutlist are easy to generate.

2- At some point this will be run on the Tivo but for now you have to have a downloaded TyStream file. But having gotten this far the rest of the work to put it on the Tivo is a piece of cake...

3- For right now I am assuming a process of "starting at the first timestamp then up to but not including the second timestamp" for the cutlist. This way even the first I-frame in the cut is gone but the second will be there. Looks to be about right with how things are arranged inside the files.

4- The program also prints the timestamps to stdout like the rest of the debugging. This way you can get a timestamp list as a text file for manual cutting.

5- Then you can create a simple text file cutlist as was mentioned before. 2 timestamps per line...

6- The -k is the command for this. It stands for "Key Frames file" rather than something like "Kut list"...

7- Then you re-run vsplit with the -c option for listing the cutlist file as an argument. It then cuts the unwanted data from the file.

As for a front-end attachment to the system I am not sure of file structure yet. I am trying to decide on the best way to do it. Fundamentally what is needed is the timestamp and then the frames data. But we need to package it for scanning back and forth. File positions would make that faster, flags that could be locked onto would make it faster, sizes of the data chunk that follows would make it faster. I just haven't decided yet. If anyone has any suggestions on that then please feel free to chime in.

But I do like the idea of others being able to do the front ends. I have enough work. And there are some here that are better at GUIs than I am and some that can actually do a UNIX gui. I haven't in years and if I had to again I would want to do it in Java as it would be the least painful. Not a problem if you run X and have java installed. But anyway I digress...

--jdiner

jdiner

11-25-2002, 06:06 PM

Ha! Ok the edit list file stuff is cleaned up and finished. So it is now possible to provide a cut list with as many entries as desired and have it cut them all. When cutting on a specific GOP boundry all seems to work well with no visual issues at all. (Being on a GOP boundry SHOULD do that... :)

Also as I was playing with things I got 1 step further. I have a way to do visual editing in a very manual way. :)

Here is the process I am doing:

1- vsplit it normally with no mux'ing or other options and save the output files.

2- vsplit with -k to get the textual only edit list. The lines look like:

But as they come out in the standard output with other information (the ... 100... and so on) I used grep, for win32, to get just the lines above.

3- Load up the .m2v output from step1 with DVD2AVI.

4- Using the right and left arrow keys jumps by I frames. (See where this is going? :)

5- Count the steps for now and each right or left step directly relates to one of the above.

6- Build a cut list with the times from above, from this one to this one, and save it out.

7- Mux the fix with the -m and new -c options thus:

vsplit1o -c cut.txt -m file.ty output.m2v junk.m2a > junk.txt

and you get what appears to be a perfectly edited, on GOP boundries, MPEG-2 file.

Now this is not that easy to do! Sad but true. Counting the stupid arrow key clicks from the DVD2AVI main window is a royal pain! I got lost so many times trying this out and I wanted to use key repeat etc...

So the good news for this part too. I am almost done with an altered version of DVD2Avi that will show in the display window (at the side when previewing etc...) the current count of the I-Frame you are on. Then key-repeats allow for fast fast editing through the file.

This is still not direct or perfectly easy as you have to make a cut list manually and then go through the output list to get the timstamps. But a simple program to pull out timestamps from the output list is easy enough to write. And work could be done to do other things with the DVD2Avi app itself. Have it save the "counts" directly to a file to generate the edit list.

This really only helps the Windows people but it was a nice thing to note.

--jdiner

Fugg

11-25-2002, 06:55 PM

vsplitmux-1n working fine here! no problems...

Generiq

11-25-2002, 08:34 PM

I was just wondering if there is any info on how to test these releases out and what kind of clips you want them tested on?

RxMan

11-25-2002, 08:39 PM

I can't believe the progress that has been made! For a while it was one step foward and two steps back. Great work JDiner!! This has got to be a gratifying point in the project for you.

rpongett

11-25-2002, 09:07 PM

Originally posted by jdiner
I am almost done with an altered version of DVD2Avi that will show in the display window (at the side when previewing etc...) the current count of the I-Frame you are on. Then key-repeats allow for fast fast editing through the file.

This is still not direct or perfectly easy as you have to make a cut list manually and then go through the output list to get the timstamps. But a simple program to pull out timestamps from the output list is easy enough to write. And work could be done to do other things with the DVD2Avi app itself.
--jdiner

Wow. Where it is now (DVD2AVI to get I-frames for cut list) isn't even that big of a pain. There are usually only 3-4 commercial breaks in a half hour show counting the beginning and end.

Also, the commercial cutting feature is probably much bigger for those of burning animated shows, like the Simpsons, Southpark, The Critic, etc . . Most Southparks are only around 350MB for a full half hour. That means that the non-animated commercial breaks likely take up well over half of the space. So I can probably get twice or more the number of Southparks on a DVD with no ads as I could if I had ads.

FredThompson

11-25-2002, 11:31 PM

Originally posted by rpongett
Most Southparks are only around 350MB for a full half hour. That means that the non-animated commercial breaks likely take up well over half of the space. So I can probably get twice or more the number of Southparks on a DVD with no ads as I could if I had ads.

Well, if you're willing to transcode you might be able to squeeze even more without any quality loss IF you use Donald Graft's dupe filter for AVISynth. It's specifically created for anime and if sequential frames are close enough to each other, the first replaces the second. Thus, when encoding, there is NO change between the frames so you get an even tighter encdoes. You can tweak it all you want for size of blocks compared and that kind of thing.

Hmmm...wonder if there's a way to do similar filtering such that "black" doesn't swim (like during credits on a lot of movies.)

jdiner

11-26-2002, 01:52 AM

Originally posted by Generiq
I was just wondering if there is any info on how to test these releases out and what kind of clips you want them tested on?
Yeah. Read back in this thread and in the one with the same name but without the "#2" in the title. It is in this same forum.

Make some small clips using TyFileSplit that showcase things that can be a/v sync'ed and then start processing them.

Best bet would be to search for messages from me. There are a lot but you need to read them to catch up.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-26-2002, 01:54 AM

Originally posted by RxMan
I can't believe the progress that has been made! For a while it was one step foward and two steps back. Great work JDiner!! This has got to be a gratifying point in the project for you.
Yeah. I was thinking the same thing earlier today. Things are finally beginning to fall into place. Still a ways to go but the end is in sight. Some clean ups, some better code for SA Tivo support, and a few other things and it is ready to roll.

--jdiner

alunj

11-26-2002, 09:49 AM

mux1n ok on SA UK tivo
Sync Good.
Alun

edpuffmonster

11-26-2002, 02:21 PM

Originally posted by FredThompson
Hmmm...wonder if there's a way to do similar filtering such that "black" doesn't swim (like during credits on a lot of movies.)
Sure, increase the bandwidth. :)

I was actually hoping the echostar/DTV merger would happen and they could combine resources and effectively double bandwidth for each channel.

Seriously though, sure you can force everything below a particular threshold to solid black. This can easily be done on playback and most DVD players have the feature built in. "enhanced blacklevel" is Toshiba's name for it.

Unfortunately, the same kind of artifacting happens with any solid color. Black, White, Blue, whatever...

Fixing the mpeg itself would require re-encoding. "Smart" encoders like Nandub SBC can be tweaked to automatically prevent that kind of artifacting... I don't know of any software mpeg-2 encoders with similar features.

I believe DTV has different encoder profiles for different channels. Obviously some are given more bandwidth than others... but if you look at cartoon network, for example, they've done a pretty good job of taking care of that type of artifacting. Look at anything animated / solid black / solid white on many of the other channels and it looks like shit. :)

Edit: Sorry, I've gotten completely off-topic here. If you have comments, please reply via PM and not in this thread.

jdiner

11-27-2002, 12:10 AM

Alright most recent flame and responses deleted. That is the rule for this forum. Some did reply. No concern to me. I mean I wanted to as well. But we really need to avoid it...

I am not going to apologize for way I do things.

For those that want to wait it out, go away and do something else and the be surprised when it is all done. For those that want to be here as it happens I will continue to post comments on the progress being made.

I have spent the day going over the editing mechanism. DVD2AVI while a great program has issues all it's own and a ton of code written to do things in a certain way that DO NOT work well for what we were trying.

So I have spent the day building a new program based off of some free mpeg-2 decoding source (well several actually) so that we can do just what we want with it all. So far so good. I was coming here to post good news when I caught the flame. Amazing isn't how one ***** can dampen the mood for everyone. :(

--jdiner

Pr.Sinister

11-27-2002, 12:16 AM

Originally posted by jdiner
I was coming here to post good news when I caught the flame. Amazing isn't how one ***** can dampen the mood for everyone. :(

--jdiner

Don't let that stop you man... i live for the little arrow icon indicating new posts in the thread. And when it says last post
was from jdiner, then i'm down right giddy! :)

I am salivating and can't wait to be able to edit properly!

In fact, i smell the end is closer and closer so i am finally taking
the plunge and buying a Sony DRU-500A on Thursday (payday!).

Keep up the good work... even if it is a bit excruciating sometimes ;)

-Pr.

RxMan

11-27-2002, 12:17 AM

Don't let it bother you. Keep the updates coming. I like to follow along and test when I can (only I have yet to get a stream that has failed).

jdiner

11-27-2002, 02:46 AM

Alright. The good news is that I have a working custom Win32 program for doing the editing from my own custom key frame files.

The bad news is that I had to abandon the changes to DVD2AVI. The author of that tool and myself just think differently. While I am convinced his is the better stuff than the free code I used as a basis for what I am doing now I was getting hung up majorly on his buffer manipulation.

Besides this is designed to be simple. And while the video output is kind of sad compared to the output from DVD2AVI you can visually see what is going on to do the editing.

I am just putting the finishing touches to the GUI for the creation of the edit points. Then a mass release of everything as it stands will be made. After some quick testing I expect things will move very quickly.

--jdiner

sirfergy

11-27-2002, 03:16 AM

This sounds so exciting! I can't wait! Thank you so much for your hard work.

rd001

11-27-2002, 08:59 AM

Originally posted by jdiner I am not going to apologize for way I do things. Nor should you.

Keep pressing to the finish line. Then just let the flamers argue with success.

Eagerly awaiting your final version and resisting the urge to patch...

Rotten

11-27-2002, 01:10 PM

For a job well done. I will vote for you.

bato

11-27-2002, 07:40 PM

Originally posted by Pr.Sinister
Don't let that stop you man... i live for the little arrow icon indicating new posts in the thread. And when it says last post
was from jdiner, then i'm down right giddy! :)

I am salivating and can't wait to be able to edit properly!

In fact, i smell the end is closer and closer so i am finally taking
the plunge and buying a Sony DRU-500A on Thursday (payday!).

Keep up the good work... even if it is a bit excruciating sometimes ;)

-Pr.

jdiner: I agree completly, I'm rebuilding my system and got a SA to test other things, and I beleive it will be ready next week.

pr.sinister: First thing I did when I got the 500A was to upgrade to 1.0D, no problems, make sure you send the $50 MIR for it, and buy some discs with it 2X if you can at 1X you will end dry with all that salivating :D

abcdriver

11-28-2002, 03:03 AM

I'm salivating for cuts too (maybe it's just the turkey...)

Happy American Thanksgiving JD, thanks for all your hard work!

jdiner

11-28-2002, 04:31 AM

Sorry for no release. My family celebrated early. Wed... So many married people running around now that we had to change the date to be able to get everyone together.

Wow. Sorry it is late. I left what I had really intended to say out. I have been working on the visual system for the editing and it is coming along nicely. I just simply ran out of time when the party started to do any more. Going to a cousins house for T-Day tommorow. So it is going to be a bit before I get anymore out. I will try to make the release as soon as possible. But be patient and we will have something good, and please one and all enjoy the holidays. For those not in the US. Well, have a good weekend... :)

--jdiner

Immo

11-28-2002, 03:20 PM

Originally posted by jdiner
But be patient and we will have something good, and please one and all enjoy the holidays. For those not in the US. Well, have a good weekend... :)

--jdiner

Same to you jdiner, have a great Turkey Day. I have a bunch of TY streams ready to slice and dice for my kids (well me too):

but I have become so spoiled by how fast I can extract, and burn to DVD-RW for archiving; I wanted to offer up an idea for modifications to tyserver_mfs, to make it even easier!

Because I always leave a session open running tyserver_mfs running on my DTiVo - I can quickly launch TyTool5 and pick and choose my shows to extract. But I thought what a GREAT thing it would be if tyserver_mfs was alittle more robust, in the sense that it could keep track of what new shows were available for extraction. This way it could create a queue - and with the client side on the PC - handshake with an option to extract EVERY show recorded on a predetermined schedule or cycle.

This way the PC could proccess un-attended - If it was able (tyserver_mfs) to be able to be configured to say transfer only those shows that were scheduled to expire, or be deleted by a date (not save until I delete) you could setup your recordings that you wanted to watch on TiVo with Save Until Delete - the rest would end up on your PC is short order and get automatically deleted off Now Showing, once extracted.

Automating the vsplit, and muxing is quite simple on the PC side using commandline tools, I'm going to drop a hint to Derrow, (IFOEdit - author) to provide commandline options for DVDAuthoring - This way In theory; you could have a folder structure on your PC that was automatically being filled with DVD TitleSet folders ready to burn/archive to DVD.

I am now burning to DVD 3-5 shows a day, and the compression is so good off my DTivo I can fit 2-3 movies per 4.7g disc.

It would require a new, or modified version of TyTool5 - to handshake with the agent or tserver_mfs - to allow for this automatic extraction process.

Just thinking and dreaming out loud, don't want to disturb the path of development; but wanted to throw out my ideas for future consideration and feedback.

thanks again jdiner, and hope you and your family have a safe and happy hoilday season!

JasonJLee

11-29-2002, 10:27 AM

I posted this in this thread on the 28th October.

Wish no.1
Hi Jdiner.

Nice to have you back!

My number 1 wish is probably possible via other routes, but I'd rather use tytool if you can add it.

I'd like to have extraction of certain shows to be automatic, and happen during the day. Say the software polls the Tivo every hour, looking for any show from a list of shows. So I come home, and the shows have already been transfered to my machine, and maybe deleted from the Tivo? (I have a machine running all the time recording security cameras, so it makes no diff to electricy bills!)

I played around with various bits and pieces before my HD died last week and took all the .net stuff I'd been doing with it.

I managed to send the commands from the pc front end to the tivo running ty_server and get the program list back, but I felt a little funny playing around without mentioning it, and I'm pretty sure that the next bit would be much more difficult and I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

I don't want to rewrite anything clever I just want to add scheduling to the existing program, but I couldn't see any way of doing that reliably. I certainly don't want to get into rewriting anything thats already been written.

I know it's minor, but it would save me 5 Minutes a day of hassle.. And that does add up.

J

I'm doing the same as you.. Jdiner said he would put it in the next tytool release in that same thread the next day.

However, no tytool release since then, as he's tied up in the muxing. Though he has mentioned improvements to the system.

Anyway, you can put your mind at rest. Not to put words in Jdiner's mouth, but I think that features on its way.

J

bronco13

11-29-2002, 02:07 PM

and the compression is so good off my DTivo I can fit 2-3 movies per 4.7g disc.

Hi-8, you are able to put multiple titles onto one DVD? Are you using ifoedit? How are you doing this? I've searched through the forum (for ifoedit) a couple of times and the answer always seems to be 'not yet', or 'when it's done'.

Are you authoring with something else besides ifoedit?

abcdriver

11-29-2002, 03:44 PM

This is getting off topic, go read the Mac OS X workflow, you can already put multiple DTivo titles on a single dvd without muxing using only TyTool5 to extract and split, then composing the dvd with DVD Studio Pro.

fredisdead

11-29-2002, 04:57 PM

Jdiner,

Another vsplit13c wierdness I am seeing is that every file I have split shows an OOB at exactly block number 4090. Coincidence or bug? No problems using the resulting elementals though. Also, any progress on the Temporal Reference problem in vpslit13c (but not in vsplit13) I previously reported.

Do you want me to send you some of the ty files? If so where should I ftp them?

Finally, any chance of you releasing an updated unrestricted vsplit13d fixing some of the 13c bugs (unrelated to muxing) for those of us burning shows with maestro or other authoring tools?

pbar

11-29-2002, 07:52 PM

Originally posted by fredisdead
Jdiner,

Another vsplit13c wierdness I am seeing is that every file I have split shows an OOB at exactly block number 4090. Coincidence or bug?

Pretty much every UK tivo TySream I've run through vsplit has found an OOB packet at approx every 4096 chunks. Each one is 'ignored' leading to a cumulative A/V sync error. This never seems to have been addressed and prevents building a decent mpg from any extracted TyStream (on my tivo).

I've been hoping that the multiplexed output would work around this problem, but it seems that most of the DVD authoring programs I have insist on demuxing files before transcoding and thus throw away all of the timestamps jdiner has gone to great lengths to preserve. :(

Still not managed to get a single program burned to DVD with correct lipsync ... even following JDiner's magic 14-step failsafe procedure. Pretty depressing really. :(

drapatin

11-29-2002, 08:10 PM

ABC:

Yes, a great solution if you happen to be one of the minority 4.5% of computer users who use a Mac.

Hi8

11-29-2002, 08:15 PM

Originally posted by bronco13
Hi-8, you are able to put multiple titles onto one DVD? Are you using ifoedit? How are you doing this? I've searched through the forum (for ifoedit) a couple of times and the answer always seems to be 'not yet', or 'when it's done'.

Are you authoring with something else besides ifoedit?

I'm using version .096B1 it is a release that was distributed I think to current contributors - I also donated to other projects and have been included on a mailist that shares pre-releases, or betas.

I'm not sure if the latest "stable" release has that feature or not, (multiple Title Set) I don't recall. I know it was just added a short time ago.

But itis along with TyTool5 & Vsplit the Holy Grail for my TiVo! I no longer use "save to VCR" DVD-RW is MUCH faster, and the quality is apples an oranges!

I always avoided the VCR feature where possible, but when space was an issue I had no choice But now it's so easy and fast it has become routine, and space is no longer a problem for me.:D

Kythorn

11-29-2002, 08:48 PM

Originally posted by pbar
Pretty much every UK tivo TySream I've run through vsplit has found an OOB packet at approx every 4096 chunks. Each one is 'ignored' leading to a cumulative A/V sync error.

I believe that # of chunks exactly coincides with the FSID boundaries.

Hi8

11-29-2002, 08:52 PM

Originally posted by bronco13
Hi-8, you are able to put multiple titles onto one DVD? Are you using ifoedit? How are you doing this? I've searched through the forum (for ifoedit) a couple of times and the answer always seems to be 'not yet', or 'when it's done'.

Are you authoring with something else besides ifoedit?

IFOEdit .096B1 - does it all. right from the vsplit files .m2v & .m2a

FreydNot

11-29-2002, 11:41 PM

Looks like the newest version of IFOedit wild on the net is 0.95. I sure hope the author doesn't get too distracted with his new project (dvdxcopy) and forgets to release the newer IFOedit :(

jdiner

11-30-2002, 03:13 AM

Originally posted by fredisdead
Jdiner,

Another vsplit13c wierdness I am seeing is that every file I have split shows an OOB at exactly block number 4090. Coincidence or bug? No problems using the resulting elementals though. Also, any progress on the Temporal Reference problem in vpslit13c (but not in vsplit13) I previously reported.

Do you want me to send you some of the ty files? If so where should I ftp them?

Finally, any chance of you releasing an updated unrestricted vsplit13d fixing some of the 13c bugs (unrelated to muxing) for those of us burning shows with maestro or other authoring tools?

Go back and re-read some of the early messages about vsplit. Part of why it works where everything else has issues is becuase it finds and ignores the bad Out-Of-Band data. (And yes I borrowed that term from networking...)

As someone else pointed out it is indeed a reference to the boundry between FSIDs. There is often bad data extracted from the Tivo. It is a good thing that VSplit is catching it. As was mentioned over and over before it is only "bad" if the error messages has the word "hole" in it. That indicates that something that should have been there was not. Not the VSPLIT cut it but it never came down from the tivo.

So no, while I appriciate the offer, I don't need copies of it. What you have is simply proof that vsplit is working.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-30-2002, 03:19 AM

Originally posted by pbar
Pretty much every UK tivo TySream I've run through vsplit has found an OOB packet at approx every 4096 chunks. Each one is 'ignored' leading to a cumulative A/V sync error. This never seems to have been addressed and prevents building a decent mpg from any extracted TyStream (on my tivo).

I've been hoping that the multiplexed output would work around this problem, but it seems that most of the DVD authoring programs I have insist on demuxing files before transcoding and thus throw away all of the timestamps jdiner has gone to great lengths to preserve. :(

Still not managed to get a single program burned to DVD with correct lipsync ... even following JDiner's magic 14-step failsafe procedure. Pretty depressing really. :(

No. Unless the OOB chunk report has the word "hole" in it then all is well. At least well enough that that is not the cause.

The OOB chunks you see are part of the extraction and are EXTRA data that is not part of the real stream being extracted.

I can't tell you why your mux'ing with other tools fails. I would have to have written them or at least looked at the internals. And while something must be going on, VSplit doesn't arbitrarily start throwing things out in the hopes of messing things up for you.

Any number of things can cause drift. The tivo can get busy and lose chunks of data during the saving process. This happens alot on my DTivo if I am using tivoweb during a recording. When this happens you don't lose a chunk, you just lose 1 or 2 audio records.

Reguardless. Mux'ing the split files is problematic for all of the reasons I have specified in so many messages. A single lost audio record accounts for at least 24ms of sync loss and I can see that. I bet you can 2. Lose just 2 across a full stream and you are out of luck completely.

Now use my mux'ing to get the output and things stay perfect. At least as perfect as they were on the tivo.

Eventually it will be producing something that can be used as input directly to various DVD tools. Perhaps not yours but that means you have to go out and get a different tool. One that will accept the pre-built VOB files.

--jdiner

pbar

11-30-2002, 07:31 AM

Originally posted by jdiner
Any number of things can cause drift. The tivo can get busy and lose chunks of data during the saving process. This happens alot on my DTivo if I am using tivoweb during a recording. When this happens you don't lose a chunk, you just lose 1 or 2 audio records.
...
A single lost audio record accounts for at least 24ms of sync loss and I can see that. I bet you can 2. Lose just 2 across a full stream and you are out of luck completely.

Agreed ... but seems like I'm missing video frames rather than audio given the direction of the drift. It also seems to happen in almost every recording, and this makes it impossible to use any of the standard tools which split the tystream into m2a and m2v.

Now use my mux'ing to get the output and things stay perfect. At least as perfect as they were on the tivo.

Yep - your muxed files play back fine for me on the PC. (thanks for all the hard work!) The problem comes for me with DVD authoring software that doesn't pay any attention to the presentation timestamps and just blindly assumes that frames come at 25fps and audio at 32kHz. Most of the 'frame-serving' Divx tools I've tried seem to have this assumption as well.

Maybe one way to work around this would be to throw away / insert audio samples during extraction to keep the audio in step? (I'm naively assuming here that it's possible when extracting/muxing to tell when a frame or audio record has been dropped? - it's a while since I last read the source code of tyc.c!) ... of course you may already be doing this for all I know!

Eventually it will be producing something that can be used as input directly to various DVD tools. Perhaps not yours but that means you have to go out and get a different tool. One that will accept the pre-built VOB files.

Straight to VOB would certainly be the holy grail... but that would at least require transcoding 32KHz audio on a UK TiVo - even assuming the video was recorded at a DVD-compatible resolution. At the moment there's no way for me to upsample the audio in a muxed file without screwing up the sync again.

hancocks

11-30-2002, 12:10 PM

Folks,

Hi8 turned me onto IFOEdit's new beta (0.96B1), and so far (very early) it looks totally cool for taking video/audio from jdiner's tools and mux'ing them into VOBs, with multiple titles. Jdiner, have you played with this, and if so, what do you think? I've run about five different tests so far and haven't had sync problems. And the VOBs generated are DVD-R/RW-ready, complete with IFOs.

- Stu

jdiner

11-30-2002, 02:02 PM

Originally posted by pbar

Straight to VOB would certainly be the holy grail... but that would at least require transcoding 32KHz audio on a UK TiVo - even assuming the video was recorded at a DVD-compatible resolution. At the moment there's no way for me to upsample the audio in a muxed file without screwing up the sync again.
Another forum member has been putting in time on doing just that and while I have not had time to go over it in any detail it appears that he has been complete successful. The code can do any change between 32, 44.1, and 48. I.e. from any one of them to any other.

So that is taken care of as well. It is just something that will get slipped in as I finish what I am working on most right now. Finishing the mux'ing/editing.

--jdiner

jdiner

11-30-2002, 02:06 PM

Originally posted by hancocks
Hi8 turned me onto IFOEdit's new beta (0.96B1), and so far (very early) it looks totally cool for taking video/audio from jdiner's tools and mux'ing them into VOBs, with multiple titles. Jdiner, have you played with this, and if so, what do you think? I've run about five different tests so far and haven't had sync problems. And the VOBs generated are DVD-R/RW-ready, complete with IFOs.

I don't have the 96 beta. From what I ready on the web site and here and what not it was a limited released to early testers etc...

As of .95 the mux'ing was failing on my known VFR test clips. That is not to say that it is bad. Just that it was as unaware of the nature of things as the rest of the tools. I would be more than willing to take a look at it if I had it. But it would appear I will have to wait it out.

I have an idea that if other followed it might lead to better mux'ing from everything out there. It is possible that this is what derrow did and if so then his mux'ing should come out perfect. I would like to see it at some point to check out my theories.

--jdiner

Hi8

11-30-2002, 03:00 PM

Originally posted by jdiner
I don't have the 96 beta. From what I ready on the web site and here and what not it was a limited released to early testers etc...

As of .95 the mux'ing was failing on my known VFR test clips. That is not to say that it is bad. Just that it was as unaware of the nature of things as the rest of the tools. I would be more than willing to take a look at it if I had it. But it would appear I will have to wait it out.

I have an idea that if other followed it might lead to better mux'ing from everything out there. It is possible that this is what derrow did and if so then his mux'ing should come out perfect. I would like to see it at some point to check out my theories.

--jdiner

jdiner;

check your email @best.com --

I have had only one failure with .096B1 --"Sweet Revenge" I'm going to record again via TiVo --- and see if it was just a fluke. The lipsync was off over 2-3 secs. Other than that it was a dead-ringer EVERYTIME!

I've taken FULL advantage of the FREE HBO Thanksgiving Weekend --- and archived over 15 recordings to DVD-RW to watch later... I also use the app. DVDBurn from Derrow, or Nero (latest version) haven't created a coaster yet!

I'm still wondering how DTiVo compresses things so well? I can fit more than 2hours on DVD-RW using this method. This is CHEAPER than VHS! and let's not mention the quality.... hands down!

Fugg

11-30-2002, 03:29 PM

any idea when .096B1 will be in general release?

digitalAir

11-30-2002, 04:06 PM

Originally posted by Hi8
I'm still wondering how DTiVo compresses things so well? I can fit more than 2hours on DVD-RW using this method. This is CHEAPER than VHS! and let's not mention the quality.... hands down!

that's easy...

1. SVCD resolution (480x480) instead of DVD (720x480) - 2/3 the resolution of DVD allows the ability to spend more bandwidth on motion. besides a standard tv can't really display more that about 500 pixels across anyhow...

2. average of 2.4 Mbps (maxing out around 15Mbps) - not much to explain there... :)

3. and the coup-de-gras... VFR... Steel bandwidth from low-action scenes by holding a frame 50% longer and all of a sudden you've got quite a bit of extra bandwidth to play with... :)

bronco13

11-30-2002, 05:54 PM

any idea when .096B1 will be in general release?

Yeah, how do the rest of us get to check out .096B1?

hancocks

11-30-2002, 06:14 PM

bronco13,

It's pretty easy. You log onto Derrow's website, click on the beta button, pay PayPay $5, and: 1) you are now a member (after you get your emailed password) and have full privileges on the site, including his early releases, and 2) have contributed (in a small way) to his finances as incentive to keep doing what he's doing. Which he seems to be doing very well. $5? Geez. I bet we all blow five bucks on stuff we never think about. Every day.
And for that, you get to try his stuff early!

- Stu

Hi8

11-30-2002, 07:30 PM

Originally posted by hancocks
bronco13,

It's pretty easy. You log onto Derrow's website, click on the beta button, pay PayPay $5, and: 1) you are now a member (after you get your emailed password) and have full privileges on the site, including his early releases, and 2) have contributed (in a small way) to his finances as incentive to keep doing what he's doing. Which he seems to be doing very well. $5? Geez. I bet we all blow five bucks on stuff we never think about. Every day.
And for that, you get to try his stuff early!

- Stu

yeah... and if you are feeling lucky make it $10-15 it's christmas season! he can prabably use the extra.. besides it's a donation. Don't think $5 is the amount you NEED to send.

bronco13

11-30-2002, 07:57 PM

Thanks guys...

I go to www.ifoedit.com and then click on the button that says "Beta Area" and I get a "404 - File not found"

Also, it looks like I've been redirected to ifoedit.wh.fr0zen.com

When I go to ifoedit.wh.fr0zen.com/prel.html I get the same thing...

I have several T's here at work so I have access to quite a few IP's and I've tried from several external interfaces and get the same error.

Am I going to the right place???

Hi8

11-30-2002, 08:30 PM

Originally posted by bronco13
Thanks guys...

I go to www.ifoedit.com and then click on the button that says "Beta Area" and I get a "404 - File not found"

Also, it looks like I've been redirected to ifoedit.wh.fr0zen.com

When I go to ifoedit.wh.fr0zen.com/prel.html I get the same thing...

I have several T's here at work so I have access to quite a few IP's and I've tried from several external interfaces and get the same error.

Am I going to the right place???

try this link (http://mpucoder.kewlhair.com/derrow/)

(I have also had trouble connecting to his site from time to time, I think he is using a DNS round-robin technique for his multi-server load balancing, and one of the servers is down, or removed, just keep trying you will get it soonoer or later.)

FreydNot

11-30-2002, 08:42 PM

Thanks for the link. http://mpucoder.kewlhair.com/donate.html worked. I just sent in my donation.

bronco13

11-30-2002, 08:51 PM

Thanks Hi8, your link worked like a champ!

I signed up and then went back to Paypal to add more cash like you suggested. IFOEdit rocks...

bronco13

11-30-2002, 09:23 PM

Just found the 0.96 Beta 1 under the "Beta" button. Cool!!!!

hancocks

11-30-2002, 09:46 PM

Bronco13,

Try:

http://mpucoder.kewlhair.com/Derrow/index.html

- Stu

NutMonkey

12-03-2002, 02:54 AM

JDiner,

Have you seen GOP Chop (http://outflux.net/unix/software/GOPchop/) ? It seems to be very similar to what you're trying to do with the editting, has a simple interface for specifying cut points. It creates a merged mpg from the specified cuts, it would probably not be a ton of trouble to get it to output a cutlist file instead. GOP Chop seemed to work well for me, though I have not yet purchased a DVD burner, I just watched the resulting mpg files from my PC.

tweaky

12-03-2002, 08:39 AM

Jdiner has seen Gop Chop. Here is his opinion on it...Jdiner Gop Chop (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=61649&highlight=gopchop#post61649)

mrwalker66

12-03-2002, 08:48 AM

thanks for the links to 0.96 Beta 1, the program is great, just what i have been waiting for...

cwingert

12-05-2002, 04:20 PM

Hi8,

Mind posting a HOWTO for using ifoedit.

When I tried to re-mux with ifoedit it crashes. So I assume I am doing something wrong.

Which Windows version are you using?

Thanks

Hi8

12-06-2002, 07:22 AM

Originally posted by cwingert
Hi8,

Mind posting a HOWTO for using ifoedit.

When I tried to re-mux with ifoedit it crashes. So I assume I am doing something wrong.

Which Windows version are you using?

Thanks

extract with Tytool5 -
split with vsplit13c

choose DVDAuthor with IFOEdit 096b1 selecting your split files
as your source ( create and use a celltimes.txt for chapters if you like)

and create a titleset ... burn with your software of choice.

watch with your favorite "480x480" DVD format friendly set top player" I use either an Apex 1100W, Koss 2163, or Nextbase DMV4. in less time that it takes to record to tape!

cwingert

12-06-2002, 10:22 AM

Interesting, This is what I did and IfoEdit crashed on me. I am using Win2K, which version of Windows are you using?

THanks

Hi8

12-06-2002, 03:30 PM

Originally posted by cwingert
Interesting, This is what I did and IfoEdit crashed on me. I am using Win2K, which version of Windows are you using?

THanks

W2k

edpuffmonster

12-06-2002, 09:03 PM

Ifoedit crashes if you feed it a Celltimes.txt named anything other than exactly "Celltimes.txt".

jdiner

12-06-2002, 09:17 PM

Alright folks. I am back. Sort of.

As I mentioned in another thread I had some major, yet seemingly simple, health problems on thanksgiving. Really knocked me out good. You just never think of your ears as a source for problems. Man it sucks to get old.

Anyway, I am back to working on what I was working on.

--jdiner

alunj

12-07-2002, 03:36 AM

not the dreaded laberinthitis (sp?)
Couldnt stand up for 2 weeks when i had it !

A

jdiner

12-07-2002, 04:31 PM

Dizziness did not seem to be one of my main problems. I.e. not more than a minute or 2 total. But the ringing was multi-toned and so loud in volume that I couldn't sleep for several days and working was just not going to happen.

With the drugs and the doctors visits and whatnot it is down to a faily low volume most of the time but it sounds like the old monitors did years ago when they had problems with the fly-back transformers. A really high pitched squeal. Like I said I just hope it goes away completely.

--jdiner

ghost_rdr

12-09-2002, 04:39 PM

[

Originally posted by Hi8
Slightly a side topic -- from the trend of vsplit->mux->edit
I am now burning to DVD 3-5 shows a day, and the compression is so good off my DTivo I can fit 2-3 movies per 4.7g disc.

what compression and how are you fitting 2-3 movies on one 4.7g dvd-r. can you explain please.

Thanks in advance,
Ghost_Rdr

dlang

12-09-2002, 04:57 PM

dtivo tends to use ~1.2G/hour so a 4.7G DVD will hold almost 4 hours ov video (at full quality, no transcoding needed)

cool..you say commercials removed. is there anyway to remove the commercials from a .vob file or m2v file? i know jdliner is working on stuff. but is there anything temp we can use till that is released

Thanks
ghost_rdr

dlang

12-09-2002, 05:05 PM

jdiner,
olaf is reporting that he is only seeing two actual framerates used by the dtiveo, 24 fps and 30 fps with frequent (undocumanted) switches between the two.

I don't know if he noticed a pattern you missed or if he just hasn't seen some of the problem streams that you have worked on but I thought I'd mention it.

if he is right about it only being two framerates and switching between them then the transition from one framerate to the other is very likly an indication of a shift in the type of programming (show <-> commercial, etc)

if you haven't already done this in aprior version I missed it would be interesting to have the splitter/muxer watch the frame timing and print the timestamp if the timing changed between 1/30th second and 1/24th second per frame.

dlang

12-09-2002, 05:08 PM

Originally posted by ghost_rdr
cool..you say commercials removed. is there anyway to remove the commercials from a .vob file or m2v file? i know jdliner is working on stuff. but is there anything temp we can use till that is released

Thanks
ghost_rdr
at the moment the only even partially reliable way is to use the -j and -l options to splut/mux smaller portions of the stream. it's not very granular (nowhere close to per frame) but in general it does work.

drapatin

12-09-2002, 05:31 PM

Sometimes I just think people can't read.

There is a way to created a video from a ty stream and cut out the commercials. It is not 100% perfect, but it works.

It will have to do until Jdiner's ears quit ringing and his hard work is "shrinkwrapped"

So here it is for those of you that missed it: (for the tenth time)

Extract Video as normal (tytool)
vsplit to m2v and m2a
use IfoEdit .095 or get .096 to create VOB's (Make DVD)
Use ChopperXP to split the VOBs into smaller parts, marking in and out where commercials are located (its easy)
each mark set makes a new VOB.
Next use IfoEdit again to create the DVD...

simple process. I have done this several times with football games and you know how many commercials there are in those!!
I end up with 26-30 VOB's, but it still works.

Ok, now

STOP FRIGGIN ASKIN.

side note:
you can create dvd's with more than one title as well using the beta of ifoedit (if you donate) using the method above and a few brain cells.

bronco13

12-09-2002, 10:32 PM

Originally posted by drapatin

Sometimes I just think people can't read.

Use ChopperXP to split the VOBs into smaller parts, marking in and out where commercials are located (its easy)
each mark set makes a new VOB.

STOP FRIGGIN ASKIN.

This doesn't work. Not even a little. When I set my "mark in" and "mark out" points and save the VOB, it is like 30 seconds off. I've tried three different streams of varying lengths and they are all messed up.

I sent my $10 anyway...

Looks like you were an ******* to ghost for no reason huh? I don't think he was even talking to you in the first place...

tweaky

12-10-2002, 07:12 AM

Why don't you guys take your arguments and how to make DVD's with an incomplete program to a different thread?

It doesn't seem to fit under the message topic.....:confused:

sirfergy

12-10-2002, 12:46 PM

I hope you are feeling better Jdiner!

drapatin

12-11-2002, 12:32 AM

Sorry for going off topic.
It won't happen again. I am not usually one to branch off.

I just get tired of the same thing being asked over and over when the answer is clearly in this (and other) threads.

and ChopperXP works for me EVERY time.
I (now) have 12 NFL games perfectly synced and some movies that I chopped the beginning and ending credits. So whatever trouble your having is on you, not Chopper.

Side Note:
I agree, I am an ******* almost all the time and I'm trying hard to be 100%. But hey, nobodys perfect.

Side Note 2:

and of course he wasn't talking directly to me...
I wasn't answering him directly either.

I guess this has been a short break while there is no news with Jdiner being a bit 'off' as of late.

bronco13

12-11-2002, 08:54 PM

Drap,

Seriously though, how far off are your splits? I know it's not 100% accurate but mine are literally off anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds...

I have a similiar issue with IFOEdit where the actual frames are always off of the frame number I specify in my celltimes.txt...

I'm using XP with a million different progs that I've installed and uninstalled since this whole thing began so I'm thinking it may be time for a rebuild...

drapatin

12-11-2002, 09:13 PM

My DVD's are nearly perfect.. I do have 1-3 seconds off during commercial cuts, I should have been more specific.

It is not all the time, just sometimes..
I think it has something to do with patience. If I am patient and wait for Chopper to get to the point I want to edit out instead of rushing, it usually edits where I want it to.

You will notice that if you do not wait, it will start playing and you do not see the video move?? then it will seem to 'catch up', those are your "errors" in editing.

Of course a powerful CLEAN system helps a ton.
If you have other things going on it can get bad (10-30 secs like you)

I am a windows "expert" and I can attest that you need a CLEAN system to start with. Preferably a dedicated one.
Its not Windows fault as a Linux Geek would try to ponder.. its our (my) incessant need to install everything under the sun.

Part 1: Win2000 Minimal Progs (for Video)
Part 2: Lindows (I was curious)
Part 3: Win2000 LOADED
Part 4: Qbex (sometimes you only need the internet)

Guess which one has the most problems? - yep, # 3 :mad:
Qbex is the quickest :cool: and Lindows SUCKS. :o
Windows Minimal runs the best by far :D

jdiner

12-13-2002, 04:57 PM

Welp, at long last I started to get better. My ears are still ringing a bit, but the volume is vastly reduced. I hope that things continue to get better. But I can finally think again. There are people who never get better from ringing in the ears. I can't even imagine that. Look for new things from me in the next few days.

I am planning to take it slow and try to ease back into things, so that it doen't flair back up, but I have hopes that I am finally getting back to normal.

--jdiner

homer08

12-14-2002, 04:43 AM

JDiner:

My ear got infected and was bleeding on my pillow about a year or so ago. I had ringing for a long time and thought that it would never go away. Even after I had my hearing checked and verified normal, I had ringing. For months now things have been quiet.

Thought this information might help.

Glad you're feeling better.

JasonJLee

12-14-2002, 09:35 AM

Jdiner,

Had an ear problem a year or two ago. I never realised until then how much pain the bloody things could generate. I very rarely get ill.

Cleared up after a week or two though.

Hope you get a speedy recovery.

J

ghost_rdr

12-16-2002, 04:49 PM

Originally posted by drapatin
Sometimes I just think people can't read.

There is a way to created a video from a ty stream and cut out the commercials. It is not 100% perfect, but it works.

It will have to do until Jdiner's ears quit ringing and his hard work is "shrinkwrapped"

So here it is for those of you that missed it: (for the tenth time)

Extract Video as normal (tytool)
vsplit to m2v and m2a
use IfoEdit .095 or get .096 to create VOB's (Make DVD)
Use ChopperXP to split the VOBs into smaller parts, marking in and out where commercials are located (its easy)
each mark set makes a new VOB.
Next use IfoEdit again to create the DVD...

simple process. I have done this several times with football games and you know how many commercials there are in those!!
I end up with 26-30 VOB's, but it still works.

Ok, now

STOP FRIGGIN ASKIN.

side note:
you can create dvd's with more than one title as well using the beta of ifoedit (if you donate) using the method above and a few brain cells.

you really are a *******!

you show me where in this forum there is anything about chopperxp where there is not a couple of hundred replies in a thread and makes it almost impossibe to find. Also I thought this forum was to help people, not to basically make them think they are imposing after reading TONS of threads then asking for suggestions. you could have easily linked a msg to the tread of where the info you know of is at. Instead of being a arrogant prick about it. I hope the day comes when you need some information off me!!!!

As for everyone else, I am sorry to be writing this and I appreciate everything you guys contribute to this forum and help me and everyone else with. alot of us here are not engineers and programmers and just try to learn as we go along. my hat is off to you!.

And sorry for having to waste your time and space by writing this.

Ghost_rdr

Dibblah

12-16-2002, 05:45 PM

The search facility on this board is great - If you look at all the options :-)

One of them is "show results as posts" which makes finding things without wading through piles o posts much, much easier.

And please let's not make this into a flamefest... I enjoy coming here...

Cheers,

Allan.

hancocks

12-16-2002, 06:46 PM

Ditto on "please stop the flame war".

Drapatin, thanks for your info on chopper, people can try this as they see fit, or not.

Let's move on.

jdiner, I hope you are better...my inner ear is still slowly improving (ringing, mostly...perhaps I should answer it...).

- Stu

drapatin

12-16-2002, 08:30 PM

man, I'm sorry guys.. but I just HAVE to...

ghost_rdr

Dude, I think you need to see someone about that anger.

My post was mostly in jest.. couldn't you get the tone?
And besides, the information asked for... I PUT IT IN THE POST!

I didn't put a crappy link, I didn't say "do a search" and leave it at that.. did i?

NO, I gave an explaination, and a basic "how to"

you really are a *******!
you show me where in this forum there is anything about chopperxp where there is not a couple of hundred replies in a thread and makes it almost impossibe to find.

Well, for starters.. you could have done this search:

www.dealdatabase.com/forum/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=141283&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending (http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=141283&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending)
(if that doesn't work type in ChopperXP and choose " show as post" near the bottom)

Search by Post is the BEST way to get info.
I realize, someone would have had to READ the search options and choose sort by post.. But hey, I'm drifting here....

First It kills me to post here, because I know there are several hundred guys (stretch?) waiting on each post and are probably notified each time.. which pisses them off.. we're all waiting for the Mighty JDiner to come out with a new toy.

But since you dragged me into it over a week after it was posted.. I had to shoot back bud.

There are a lot of people who bitch that posts are hard to follow, its hard to search for stuff.. etc..
You must USE the TOOLS the board gives you to get the information you need.

SEARCH and Ye Shall eventually find, search CORRECTLY and you'll find it right away!

jdiner

12-16-2002, 11:53 PM

That is it. I mean it. Take it elsewhere on this flame-fest about DVD and other things. It is secondary to what this thread is all about. And it is getting way to distracting.

I will leave what is already here in favour of an "asked and answered" feel. But any more posts about it will be removed. Let's move on.

--jdiner

bronco13

12-17-2002, 04:22 PM

Holy crap! I was in PR for a couple of days and must have missed this one. Looked pretty good too!

<legitimate_question>
If I'm using a frame-accruate editor to identify cuts in a TY file, then why is IFOEdit always off?

Could if be codecs? (I've installed, uninstalled, installed, etc)
Could it be the editor? (Not really 'frame-accurate')
Could it be the TY stream? (VBR)
Could it be IFOEdit? (Not meant for TY)

I know it could be any or all of these things but has anyone out there had this problem and found a way to fix it?

Aside from a rebuild???
</legitimate_question>

kyle

12-17-2002, 09:12 PM

Originally posted by jdiner
3- The full stream is mux'ed out. Before the ending pieces were chopped off even with the length limits.

9- It is still limited to 2000 chunks. But this phase is coming to and end. If there are not any major problems then it means that mux'ing is going as needed and we can deal with the last stages of the VOB and editing...

These two items for version 1n seem to contradict each other. Or, does this mean it goes through the entire .ty file, but only writes the first 2000 chunks to the output file?

Thanks,
-Kyle

jdiner

12-17-2002, 11:45 PM

Originally posted by kyle
These two items for version 1n seem to contradict each other. Or, does this mean it goes through the entire .ty file, but only writes the first 2000 chunks to the output file?

They don't...

#3 is a reference to the fact that the partial seconds buffered by the system were just lost prior to version 1n. I.e. they were never written to disk.

#9 is a reference to the fact that it is still not designed to run full length. It was and still to some extent is in a testing phase. I had planned to be done by now but didn't make it for non-technical reasons.

--jdiner

Erock

12-18-2002, 01:10 AM

Sorry if this is the wrong place for this post.. I am a newbie and resist posting in an effort to limit spam on these threads. After a full weekend of research, I haven't found a solution to an extraction problem I am having.. I am on the verge of giving up, but figured I would post here first for posterity.. and maybe in hopes of providing some useful logs to the project....

I want to burn LOTR to DVD. I have recorded it 3x on my Dtivo (running 2.5.1).. and have transferred it to my computer using TyTool5 (and 5r2).

Every effort made to mux the .ty file has generated errors that have ultimately prevented me from continuing.. I have used every tool I could find. Tytool, Vsplit13c, mplex, and tydemux.

The error logs from tytool/vsplit13c are as follows:

(This is from fsid 1 of 13)

These errors I assume are what is preventing IfoEdit from Authoring the DVD. The error it generates is:

Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:16.141
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:15.862
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15660.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:16.841
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:16.366
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15681.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:17.642
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:17.134
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15713.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:18.143
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:18.022
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15750.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:18.944
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:18.670
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15777.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:19.678
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:19.342
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15805.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:20.445
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:20.110
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15837.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:21.146
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:20.878
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15869.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
A/V Sync Offset: -5ms (i.e. plays 5ms late!)

captain_video

12-18-2002, 09:18 AM

I'm not sure what's happening to your LOTR recording but I'm guessing the tystrema has some glitches in it somewhere. Have you checked playback of the movie on your DTivo to see if there are any dropouts? If you get any segments with pixelisation it will wreak havoc on an extracted tystream. One other thing I noticed is that your tystream only shows MPEG Layer II audio. Try setting your initial jump point to about 60 or 70 chunks to skip past the DTV intro and you should get into the Dolby Digital soundtrack. You can set it up in the Options pull-down menu.

BillyZ

12-20-2002, 02:08 PM

I get this too on several .ty's that i have -- so ive been using tyremux (tydemux) which fixes most errors like that during the demux process..

I also noticed that many GOP errors happen with files like this too, tydemux fixes those too, it rebuilds the GOP header....the lastest version is 0.3.1 but soon 0.4.0 is going to be released

look for the tyremux thread and check it out.

Originally posted by Erock
Sorry if this is the wrong place for this post.. I am a newbie and resist posting in an effort to limit spam on these threads. After a full weekend of research, I haven't found a solution to an extraction problem I am having.. I am on the verge of giving up, but figured I would post here first for posterity.. and maybe in hopes of providing some useful logs to the project....

I want to burn LOTR to DVD. I have recorded it 3x on my Dtivo (running 2.5.1).. and have transferred it to my computer using TyTool5 (and 5r2).

Every effort made to mux the .ty file has generated errors that have ultimately prevented me from continuing.. I have used every tool I could find. Tytool, Vsplit13c, mplex, and tydemux.

The error logs from tytool/vsplit13c are as follows:

(This is from fsid 1 of 13)

These errors I assume are what is preventing IfoEdit from Authoring the DVD. The error it generates is:

Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:16.141
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:15.862
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15660.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:16.841
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:16.366
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15681.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:17.642
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:17.134
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15713.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:18.143
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:18.022
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15750.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:18.944
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:18.670
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15777.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:19.678
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:19.342
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15805.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:20.445
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:20.110
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15837.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:21.146
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:20.878
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15869.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...
A/V Sync Offset: -5ms (i.e. plays 5ms late!)

Erock

12-20-2002, 02:27 PM

I decided to record it a 4th time (this time using a different hu card), and the show recorded and extracted without any issues.

Thanks for the help.

E

jdiner

12-20-2002, 08:59 PM

Originally posted by Erock
I am a newbie and resist posting in an effort to limit spam on these threads.

Every effort made to mux the .ty file has generated errors that have ultimately prevented me from continuing.. I have used every tool I could find. Tytool, Vsplit13c, mplex, and tydemux.
The error msg when importing the media asset into DVD Maestro is:

Temporal References in GOP #222 (Zero-based) are out of sequence (0xc10b000a)

This one nothing is being done about yet. Mostly because it is a problem with the Maestro tool rather than the tivo or the stream itself. The stream might be bad but then again it might not... Who knows at this point.

Tytool Log:

Found an OOB packet... The Video Diff is: 00:06:16.141
Found an OOB packet... The Audio Diff is: 00:06:15.862
Is it in sequence??? It is OFF by exactly 15660.916667 frames.
Nope... Not in sequence... Skipping it...

These are not problems. You should have found over and over me answering this one. Unless it has the word hole in it it is not a problem. The above as a 128k chunk of data that was not part of the desired stream. So it is "skipped" which is how sync is maintained...

As for putting it on DVD we are getting there. I have a few more things to do before can be made "really easy" but others have had good success using a set of tools to get from start to finish.

--jdiner

bato

12-21-2002, 01:23 PM

Originally posted by jdiner
This one nothing is being done about yet. Mostly because it is a problem with the Maestro tool rather than the tivo or the stream itself. The stream might be bad but then again it might not... Who knows at this point.

--jdiner

I have this problem with many files extracted from the dishplayer and the error is always at the last GOP or frame, I can burn the movie ok, but I can't chop/concatenate video in DVDMaestro, so no commercial cutting. I haven't seen the error with Dtivo yet but I think if the error is at the end maybe you can cut the ty before split it, no?

Is there a way to cut only the last GOP from an .mpg file? I guess this will fix my dishplayer problem. Thanks.

drapatin

12-23-2002, 03:55 PM

hey, were all feeling the same....
will there be wrapped (zipped) software under my christmas tree??

Will I be able to dump all the useless crap off my tivo that I have been convincing myself is worth keeping onto a shiny new dvd that'll gather 10 years of dust before its picked up and I say "Damn, what was I thinking"??

Hey JDiner... how does it feel to know that you'll be directly responsible for wasting 40 or so DVD's on shows and movies I'll never watch again?

And did you even consider that before starting this project?..
how Irresponsible.

Can I get my money back ahead of time?

>>>>

Merry Christmas to all
(except the Jews, except the Christians, except the Muslims, except the blacks, except the yellows, except the whites, except the reds, except the yankees, except the Canadies..Definately except the French)
Oh well, gues that leaves.. ah, well.. noone.

Pr.Sinister

12-23-2002, 07:56 PM

Originally posted by drapatin

Will I be able to dump all the useless crap off my tivo that I have been convincing myself is worth keeping onto a shiny new dvd that'll gather 10 years of dust before its picked up and I say "Damn, what was I thinking"??

Hey JDiner... how does it feel to know that you'll be directly responsible for wasting 40 or so DVD's on shows and movies I'll never watch again?

Tell me about it man... I had the whole season of The Sopranos
on my HD and i made some AMAZING looking menus with the
Sopranos fonts, animated menus, etc...

Then i start splitting the files and removing the junk in front and at the end of the shows and when i impoted the files, all was well
until 2 of them gave me Temporal Reference errors... I went into Windows Explorer, Selected the Sopranos directory and pressed
SHIFT-DELETE.

I am not touching this again until JD has an all in one solution...
It's way too frustrating... All that for stuff i will lend out and never
watch again myself...

(sigh)

-Pr.

Hi8

12-24-2002, 10:56 AM

Originally posted by Pr.Sinister
Tell me about it man... I had the whole season of The Sopranos
on my HD and i made some AMAZING looking menus with the
Sopranos fonts, animated menus, etc...

Then i start splitting the files and removing the junk in front and at the end of the shows and when i impoted the files, all was well
until 2 of them gave me Temporal Reference errors... I went into Windows Explorer, Selected the Sopranos directory and pressed
SHIFT-DELETE.

I am not touching this again until JD has an all in one solution...
It's way too frustrating... All that for stuff i will lend out and never
watch again myself...

(sigh)

-Pr.

can you spell "DVD-RW" ?

racingclub

12-24-2002, 12:18 PM

can you spell "DVD-RW" ?

ooo, do you win a prize :confused:

Pr.Sinister

12-24-2002, 04:24 PM

Originally posted by Hi8
can you spell "DVD-RW" ?

D-B-D...

R-D-U-B-Y-A...

Damn it! ;)

newlooper

01-03-2003, 08:03 AM

Jdiner,

You OK?

aeronca

01-03-2003, 02:00 PM

Jdiner,

We all have been missing your posts. Is everything ok and is there anything that we can do for you?

get better soon...

rd001

01-05-2003, 09:27 PM

Best wishes in the New Year, Josh. I hope you're well or at least better.

I'll drop by here from time to time.

zodiacal

01-06-2003, 12:04 AM

is this the most recent thread that jdiner was in? im wondering if there is a finished muxer? the last i have seen is vsplit1l with 2000 limit. is there a newer one out?

newlooper

01-07-2003, 10:44 AM

I guess he has gone on holiday. Anybody heard from Jdiner?

zodiacal

01-07-2003, 12:41 PM

i still get sync errors when i transcode i have used many applications including. virtualdub(avisynth w/ both mpegdecoder.dll & mpeg2decX.dll) mpeg2avi, muxavi, mux-avi, tmpegenc, avs2avi,tydemux. and still i sometimes have sync errors and some work perfictly...

olaf_sc

01-07-2003, 01:39 PM

Hello,

Well jdiners vsplit with internal mux works fine if you don't intend to do anything with the resulting mpeg file.

Since he isn't correcting the mpeg stream for e.g. drift in sync you will get mpeg streams that is out of when you e.g. transcode.

Cheers Olaf

Originally posted by zodiacal
i still get sync errors when i transcode i have used many applications including. virtualdub(avisynth w/ both mpegdecoder.dll & mpeg2decX.dll) mpeg2avi, muxavi, mux-avi, tmpegenc, avs2avi,tydemux. and still i sometimes have sync errors and some work perfictly...

zodiacal

01-07-2003, 01:41 PM

but he hasn't relized a un caped version yet right? mine stops at 2000

zodiacal

01-07-2003, 05:06 PM

what version of vsplit and mplex work for you with out audio video sync problems? would the sync survive transcoding to divx?

AlphaWolf

01-07-2003, 05:46 PM

jdiner said he wasn't finnished yet, so I wouldn't relie on any version until he says otherwise.

jdiner

01-10-2003, 04:08 AM

Originally posted by olaf_sc
Well jdiners vsplit with internal mux works fine if you don't intend to do anything with the resulting mpeg file.

Since he isn't correcting the mpeg stream for e.g. drift in sync you will get mpeg streams that is out of when you e.g. transcode.

Actually I do quite a bit to address drift. Perhaps you have found some techniques I have not bothered to look for. I haven't bothered because across a full 2 hours movie I get 0ms off, read out of sync, at the end. It stays as on as my tivo does.

I say that because one episode of Enterprise was totally off for me from the get go. The audio was 600+ ms out on my tivo itself. I.e. a bad encode by the sat people themselves. Truly wierd. I managed to fix it wth VirtualDub on my way to a final form but that was the one and only time I ever saw it happen...

Anyway, be careful of blanket statements...

--jdiner

jdiner

01-10-2003, 04:35 AM

I will say one more thing on this subject and then leave it... My ears still ring. But I realized I had to learn to work anyway as it looks like it is going to be around for awhile.

So I got back in the saddle and spent the last few days working on stuff. I specifically didn't re-appear here as I wanted to get some work done rather than answer the PM's, email and what not that I always get when I come back.

So the best news, and what I had intended as a Christmas present to everyone on the forum. I have the visual editing system completed.

I spent the last week or so working things over. And I now have a combination of features that allow for complete editing, at a GOP boundry level, of a TyStream file with the output being either an MPEG-2 Program Stream file, or a VOB file for use with ifoedit and other related tools...

It is a combination of the tools you have seen and a new batch of them... All Win32 apps at this point, except for the old ones that have been unix as well (VSplit, AudioCheck etc...).

Some quick info on the new GUI Visual Editor:
- The visual editor, like all of my stuff, is straight win32.
- No MFC or other bloat-ware in there.
- No external libraries of any kind so no conflicts with other codecs or programs.
- Full support for the different resolutions of DTivo TyStreams. (352x480 and 480x480)
- Untested support for the different resolutions of SA TyStreams. Some people ahve some that are 720x480 but I don't know how to get into that mode, so I can't be sure that one works.
- Full support for any number of colors on the PC display. (Although at 16 colors it is pretty unwatchable... :)
- Tons of keyboard short-cuts for getting things working without using the mouse. You can actually do everything without touching it.
- The editing is quite a bit like VirtualDub and DVD2AVI as I patterned it off of these programs interfaces. They are what I use so...
- Takes me less than 2 minutes to make a cut list for a full 1 hour episode...

As was mentioned once before VSplit then takes the cut-list and in 1 pass makes the output mux while cutting on the fly. Very slick.

I just make a test version from a 1 hour episode of Angel from the WB. All of the following times and what not come from an AMD 900 machine. With a slow raid card...

there were 6 total cuts make, Lead-in and lead-out and the commercial breaks.

All-in-all a very nice simple visual system. At the moment not all that stream lined. You have to use TyTool to get the TyStreams, and then vsplit a number a of times with different options, and i the middle the new Visual Editor.

So what I need now are a few committed souls that have a plethora of TyStreams, a desire to edit them and produce the smallest possible MPEG-2 output, and last but not least the time to actually do so. I need some timely feedback so I can stamp any bugs and get things released including a version of TyTool that has all of this in one easy process.

So if you want to be one of the few and proud sound off...

--jdiner

jdiner

01-10-2003, 04:41 AM

Oh and it is going to take me a while to get caught up on all of the posts that were made while I was off of the forum. So be patient if you asked something and still have no reply in the next week or so then please ask again.

--jdiner

Dibblah

01-10-2003, 04:52 AM

Welcome back! Hope you make a full recovery soon.

Cheers,

Allan.

bato

01-10-2003, 05:54 AM

Originally posted by jdiner
So what I need now are a few committed souls that have a plethora of TyStreams, a desire to edit them and produce the smallest possible MPEG-2 output, and last but not least the time to actually do so. I need some timely feedback so I can stamp any bugs and get things released including a version of TyTool that has all of this in one easy process.

So if you want to be one of the few and proud sound off...

--jdiner

I only have 27 on my drive right now, but I can grab some more. I can spend around 2 hours/day to this, so if you think I'm ready for the job, or at least put me at last on your list...

Hope you get all better soon.

kyle

01-10-2003, 07:08 AM

Originally posted by jdiner
So what I need now are a few committed souls that have a plethora of TyStreams, a desire to edit them and produce the smallest possible MPEG-2 output, and last but not least the time to actually do so. I need some timely feedback so I can stamp any bugs and get things released including a version of TyTool that has all of this in one easy process.

I've got a TiVofull of stuff (about 150GB), of which perhaps 2/3 needs editing, plus another 100-odd GB of stuff already pulled off waiting...probably three different TiVo resolutions all told (one I don't use).

(Particularly partial to a bunch of Crocodile Hunter stuff for my 4-year-old daughter...OK, for me, too..:-)

Let me know, I'd love to test.

Last note (not a great one): my left ear still rings periodically (and that's like, now, for example), but has moments where it does not. It's a major drag, I know...sorry.

Welcome back.

- Stu

durian

01-10-2003, 07:58 AM

jdiner,

I have lots(pretty much all) of SA tyfiles at 720x480 and I'll be happy to test.( BTW, resolution setting on SA Tivos is discussed on http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12736&highlight=544x480)

Welcome back.

Rowan

01-10-2003, 08:51 AM

jdiner,

I also have over 120GB of ty files from SA units that I can test if needed.

Rowan

bbarry

01-10-2003, 10:18 AM

I stoped transfering my vhs home movies to dvd through my SA about 3 months ago due to the sync problems. I was just waiting for something better then mpeg-vcr and TMPGEnc to come along. I still have many more tapes to process (oldest child is 19 years old now ) that require a lot of editing. I was spending about 4 hours editing for each hour of completed mpeg. Let me know if you need any more beta testers, else Iíll just wait for a public release. Thanks

Fugg

01-10-2003, 10:20 AM

man, you couldn't have timed this any better!!!

I've got a buttload of ty's(mostly dtivo, a few sa's), a dvd burner, plenty of blanks, a fast machine and the next two days with absolutely nothing scheduled to do at work!!!!

Good to go, houston!

mpauley

01-10-2003, 10:51 AM

jdiner--

Welcome back, hope you fully recover soon. I have 2 Philips SAs running 3.0 on each. I have it set to all sorts of resolutions sitting on both. In total I have about 200 hours of streams and Im vacation for the next 2 weeks.

--mp

richlee91

01-10-2003, 11:34 AM

I could probably spend some time on it this evening. I have a TON of southparks saved off. I have a directivo.

mattdb

01-10-2003, 11:41 AM

Well, it is just going to be cold as blazes here, so I just as well stay in doors and burn some dvd's!!

Count me in.

johnny

01-10-2003, 12:10 PM

If you want to test your code on a xp dual Pentium-4 Hyperthread cpu system (shows up as 4 cpu's) let me know.

gorgias

01-10-2003, 12:45 PM

Happy to beta,

I just upgraded(?) to a DRU-500a and bought a pile of blank media. I would love to see if I can burn the drive out before my right of return to Fry's expires....

-gorgias

KEC

01-10-2003, 01:12 PM

I have 200+GB that I have been saving for editing. I have several C++ compilers if needed. (I do get paid to develop S/W.) I also have DSL if I need to transfer something large.

Kythorn

01-10-2003, 01:43 PM

Originally posted by jdiner
So if you want to be one of the few and proud sound off...

--jdiner

Where do I sign?

Pr.Sinister

01-10-2003, 02:16 PM

I am between jobs right now and i have tons of
Ty Streams waiting to be mutilated...

I can test 24/7 ! :)

newlooper

01-10-2003, 02:32 PM

I am sounding off

artships

01-10-2003, 02:36 PM

jdiner,

Anymore every extraction introduces a couple of audio glitches that each manage to de-synch everything past it about half a second each. So I would be THRILLED to run a tystream or two through your code! Just PM me, as e-mail has gotten flakey, too.

John
ps. Only one of these'll be a stream I intend to transcode (section-by-section).

jdiner

01-10-2003, 02:59 PM

Alright. Thanks. Thats enough people... Not everyone is going to be in this first round of early testing. There is just so much that is new I had to start somewhere... So please no more offers in the thread.

I will be making the stuff available in the next hour or two. I have to write up everything on how to do it. If you have used VSplit in the past you will find this easy to use, if not for those that get it please read carefully the included text.

Also for those that get it. Please DO NOT spread it. I will not be posting a list of who is on the list here, but there will be some that want it etc...

Anyway I expect there will be some changes needed to things. It will however be the full length versions. So no time limits. I think we are past that point pretty successfully now.

--jdiner

zodiacal

01-10-2003, 03:03 PM

is your new version going to be command line still? i really want the option to run other programs after its done spliting....

jdiner

01-10-2003, 03:13 PM

Vsplit is and will continue to be a command line only program. TyTool is a GUI win32 program and will continue to be so.

The new visual editor is, by its very nature, a GUI program.

So some things can still be chained together but some will not be able to do so.

The cutting is really only useful in any way with mux'ing. The cuts will destroy the sync of seperate streams. The reason why has been covered many times in many ways.

--jdiner

zodiacal

01-10-2003, 03:18 PM

transcoding is fine tho right? just 3rd party cutting requires a re-multiplex which causes the problems uneless we use your new cutter for specific tivo streams right?

jdiner

01-10-2003, 03:22 PM

For those that are curious, and many here seem to be, attached is a screenshot of the TyTool GOP Editor (I really should come up with a better name but...) window with the Angel episode from last night put into it.

Many will notice that it looks a bit like DVD2AVI with some very notable changes. The keyboard shortcuts are as similar to VirtualDub as was applicable... Over the last year I have become very comfortable with those tools and so it just worked out that way...

However to try and nip the "you stole everything from someone else messages in the bud" there is not a single line of source for DVD2AVI or VirtualDub in that program anywhere. There is not a single line of anything was release open source in there.

So take a gander... There are 2 screen shots in there, one of the main window and one of the current edit menu...

--jdiner

jdiner

01-10-2003, 03:24 PM

Originally posted by zodiacal
transcoding is fine tho right? just 3rd party cutting requires a re-multiplex which causes the problems uneless we use your new cutter for specific tivo streams right?
Yes. When you split is back down to component systems is when you get off because all timing is gone. Transcoding uses the timing and other information in a "finished" mpeg to get at the video and audio frames. Some programs do this better than others. I have little pratical experience with that type of transcoding as most of what I did was with virtualdub...

--jdiner

jdiner

01-10-2003, 03:35 PM

Ack. Now see that is why we do testing... I was putting together the docs for the early testers when I realized I forgot 1 feature all together... There is no way currently to load back in a cut-list for futher editing/changes. Sheesh. What am I new?

Ah well. Were already up to version 0.2 and I no one but me has ever even seen it... :)

--jdiner

jdiner

01-10-2003, 04:04 PM

Ooohhh. Had another great idea. Putting in a play backward feature. Had several for playing forward but I like the idea of being able to play backward through this stuff too. And it is simple enough to add.

--jdiner

Wooly

01-10-2003, 06:49 PM

Sounding Off...

I have:

1. roughly 400 gigs of TY files (Including the full Babylon5 and MacGyver series, if that means anything to you)

2. a Dual Athlon 2100 MP system with 1 gig of RAM

3. tons of free time (I'm a Network Administrator, and I basically sit on my ass waiting for the phone to ring with a problem to solve...basically I get paid for sitting around playing with DTivo files for about 30 or so hours a week).

4. A good understanding of how to edit video (been using Premiere for about 4 years and have ripped over 250 DVD's with DVD Decrypter and TMPGenc for quite some time), and have a rock-solid Dtivo w/2.5.01 and TurboNet that works perfectly.

5. Own a Pioneer A03 DVD burner, so my intention is to create shows from TY files that can be sent to IFOEdit or Spruce to make DVD's from.

I rest my case, your honor.

Originally posted by jdiner

So if you want to be one of the few and proud sound off...

--jdiner

jdiner

01-10-2003, 09:39 PM

Man alive. I started working over the docs to describe things and I found a number of menus for which the keyboard shortcut worked but picking the menu itself did nothing. But hey that is why I need beta testers... :)

Here is the basic information on how to run it. It is a bit of a process at the moment so bear with me...

1- Download the full, or as much as is wanted, of the TyStream. I still recommend using TyTool as I know that for me, it works perfectly.

2- Run it through VSplit to make a KeyFrames file. This is the I-Frames from the MPEG-2 stream. The option is -k... Doing this will create a file with a custom format in the place of the m2v file which is the key file for the editing. So the following will create a key file for the file.ty...

vsplit -k file.ty file-key.m2v junk.m2a

3- Run the GopEditor.exe program. It will open as per a standard Win32 app. Then Ctrl-o or use the file->open menu and open the file-key.m2v. I begin to think I will rename the key files to be .key but for now that are expected to be .M2V. You can put it on the command line to make things easier if you want:

GopEditor file-key.m2v
or
GopEditor

4- You should then see the first frame in the display to the left and on the right a pretty simple edit display.

- At the top a list box of the selected cuts.
- Next a slider for quick positioning in the file.
- Then 4 buttons in a row. Left-1, Right-1, Set Selection Start, Set Select Stop.
- Next 2 buttons, Add the selected cut and Delete a cut from the list. If either of these options can't be done. I.e. you have a start but no end put a MessageBeep() will be sounded. Otherwise you will visually see what you expected to happen.
- Then 4 text displays: The current frame out of how many there are, the PTS Timestamp of the current frame, and the PTS timestamp of the chosen start and end points.

5- There are a ton of short cuts as I don't like to use menus for this type of editing. Like a said a mix between DVD2AVI and VirtualDub.

- left and right arrow keys move by 1 in the appropriate direction.
- The Home key sets the start point for the current selection.
- The End key sets the end point for the current selection.

- Ctrl-left and right arrow keys move by 10 frames rather than 1.
- Ctrl-Home and Ctrl-End jump to the beginning and the end of the file.
- F5 is play forward from the current frame.
- F4 is play backward...
- Escape or Space stop the current playback.

6- Once you have the cuts made then hit Ctrl-S or File->Save to save the cut list. No requester comes up as it just saves to the name of the loaded key file with a .cut extension on the end. This will probably change...

7- Back out at the DosPrompt you need to run VSplit one more time. This time with 2 options. -m to tell it to mux the output. And -c file.m2v.cut... This second options tells vsplit to mux using the cutlist found in the file produced by GopEditor.exe. The following is the full command line for doing it:

vsplit -m -c file.m2v.cut file.ty file.m2v junk.m2v

Note what seems like the extra filename. The first one is now the cut file, then the .ty as always then the output m2v for the mux'ed output, and junk.m2a as nothing is put into that file during mux'ing.

Yeah yeah yeah. I know I should fix up the CLI arg check to be smarter but I have been busy with the rest of the real work. :)

8- The result some 2 minutes or so later depending on your hardware is a cut-down MPEG-2 PS with full sync.

Ummm. That seems like it. Oh yeah the VOB feature got pulled out of the latest vsplit bin. I thought I had it working but I found a few errors in it as well while going over it all this afternoon. Sorry. I will get it back in while others are testing this thing out for me. It should still all be present in the next 2 days for the public test release.

Check your PMs and mailboxes for notice on getting the binaries if you are one of the early testers...

--jdiner

jdiner

01-10-2003, 10:07 PM

Ok. I have 8+ early testers now. And that is enough. Not supposed to be a popularity contest. I actually went with those that have helped me test the longest... Mostly because I know what to expect from them.

For those that didn't get a PM from me, don't worry. I expect this will go to the public release by Monday of next week. I just need some testing of it all while I finish a few things I had thought were done.

Maybe you could start a new Jdiner's Muxing/GopEditor sticky thread when you release it. This one is getting long and a lot of it won't apply directly to your release version.

jdiner

01-12-2003, 04:28 PM

That is my plan. We covered quite a bit here and would be better off with something new.

--jdiner

jdiner

01-13-2003, 03:44 AM

Alright some major changes put in. I had made a few simple but serious mistakes on the editing. The principle was sound but I was doing some things wrong. Version 0.02 of the Gop Editor went out to tester tonight. If no major problems are reported then we should be well on our way.

Just a heads up...

--jdiner

jdiner

01-14-2003, 02:56 AM

Ok. I cleaned a few things out of this thread and others today that really do belong elsewhere. I don't mean a different forum, Just a different thread. daveinfla just create your own thread and ask there. This thread has a very specific purpose and I can, have and will continue to police these couple of main purposeful thread and cut things that don't belong.

Having said that a time for an explanation. I had mentioned and hoped to make the release of the editor tool today. I have a number of people 8-10, acting as a the initial testers on it. With there help I have found and fixed a number of errors ranging from serious to seriously minor. But all to the good...

So now I am just waiting on a bit more information from 2 testers in particular that are having problems with some things to determine where and how such things fit into the problem scheme. If I can get the files I need to determing the issues and get the fixes made then I expect to release things in the next few days.

I really do think that people will be much happier not all being alpha testers. Please continue to have patience just a touch longer and then everyong can play.

--jdiner

RxMan

01-16-2003, 07:58 PM

Were more problems found in testing or is there a delay due to lack of time?

As always....THANK YOU!!

jdiner

01-17-2003, 03:49 AM

Ah sorry. several major errors were found.

My test clips are small and showcase things. Unfortunately that lead to my not detecting a memory leak. I have since closed 1 of the main leaks and I am waiting on feedback from 1 or 2 more testers about the second memory leak.

Then I found a problem within the streams themselves that I was not dealing with correctly. That has been fixed. At least I think it has I am waiting for feedback on that as well.

While I have been waiting for that I have been going over the VOB generation. I know what I need to do. It is really rather simple. AS a result it now looks like nothing else will be needed to "patch up the vobs"... No ifogen, but I expect something like ifoedit to make several into 1 etc... will still be in the food chain.

Speaking of which I am having troubles getting a simple test of a DVD-R working. For anyone that has had some success with creating DVD-Rs that could you please look at the other thread created by me http://www.dealdatabase.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21083 and give me your thoughts I would really appriciate it. Once I get the base line I can finish my initial tests on the rest of it.

I tell you what everyone that is still reading this. Whether I hear back from the testers in time or not. I will release the current version of the GopEditor and the latest fixed unrestricted VSplit tommorow by 5pm my time. That way people can play with it over the weekend.

I can't garantee the VOB stuff will be back by then as I can't test things yet. But... if I can get enough information in the morning we might have VOB creation by then too.

--jdiner

rd001

01-17-2003, 10:06 AM

Well, I'll be happy to have the new work but please release it when you're satisfied with it. This is a hobby and everyone should be enjoying it. Especially the authors of hot utils (like you and Olaf).

In the meantime, I can still extract and burn some waiting tystreams with TyTool 4 (I'm not one of those bleeding edge TyTool 5 avant garde types :cool: ).

hancocks

01-17-2003, 11:35 AM

jdiner,

I've done a fair amount of experimentation with DVD-R writing, altho' I'll admit my testing is tempered by the use of an Apex 1100 player (you know, plays toast, cheese slices, etc.). However, what I've found is this:

1) (fairly well-known) -- media differences in cheap DVD-R media have created problems for me. Right now I'm using Printcos, and they seem to be OK.

2) As stated previously, Nero's .10 is problematic and should not be used. What's your writer? I'm running a Pioneer A04 (replaced by Pioneer when my A03 went flaky). Pioneer informed me that Nero is NOT supported with the A04, altho' I've had it work, and then stop working...go figure. I went back to their provided program (RecordNow), and my failures went away. I've not tried Roxio yet, but was informed that this is supported.

3) DVD-RWs have worked well for me (at least in the Apex).

4) The Apex will actually recognize a filesystem and play mpegs (at least a few that I tested). Hmm....nice.

5) I have "authored" DVD-Rs with IFOEdit (with great but not universal success), SpruceUp (more of a struggle for some reason, but I've not tested at length), and MyDVD, which is pretty good and pretty forgiving, but has the annoying habit of declaring a file imported to be using about 30% more space than it's actually taking up (TiVo files primarily). I hacked the header and lots of stuff, and have not yet been able to change that. FAQs on the Sonic site are not all that useful (imagine that). DVDs authored from an on-the-fly MPEG-2 encoder do not have that same problem. I'm still looking into this.

6) Different players seem to respond differently to the so-called "standard" DVD formats, i.e., the necessity of having VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS folders with the data within, etc. Once again (why I'm not a great set-top tester) the Apex doesn't care.

Bottom line...it's still really early in the DVD-R game, and it looks to me like there is so much variability and so many different parameters that even someone's so-called battle-tested methodology may work for most people but not all.

Last bit:

1) What are you "authoring" with (which tool)?
2) What is your DVD writer?
3) What type of media? If generic, who makes it?

If you feel inclined to post your start-to-finish steps, that would help all of us looking in.

what version of PowerDVD are you using? my version only alows playing the VOB files, NOT the IFO.

When I press [ctrl-O] it just selects FILE MODE and then have a browse-able dialog to find mpeg,vob,avi ...etc...

MyKroFt

01-19-2003, 10:23 AM

My version is for XP, which I think is version 4.

I have 3 different open functions:

Drive
Disk on HD
File

The Disk on HD, asks where the Video_TS dir is and I can load either file and powerdvd will play it just like it was playing off DVD.

Nice for testing layouts, controls etc before burning...

Myk

Hi8

01-19-2003, 03:42 PM

jdiner;

a suggestion... if you could add a couple of buttons in the nav-panel that emulate the 30sec adv / 10sec back (30secskip) that TiVo can do - it will help jumping to find the commerical - split frame(s).

I haven't used VirtualDub in a LONG time , and I'm getting used to the nav-panel interface of mpeg2vcr - but being able to jump a determined amount will be a blessing.

Pr.Sinister

01-19-2003, 06:53 PM

Originally posted by Hi8
jdiner;

a suggestion... if you could add a couple of buttons in the nav-panel that emulate the 30sec adv / 10sec back (30secskip) that TiVo can do - it will help jumping to find the commerical - split frame(s).

I haven't used VirtualDub in a LONG time , and I'm getting used to the nav-panel interface of mpeg2vcr - but being able to jump a determined amount will be a blessing.

Although it sems like a good idea, i'm not sure it can help the process be any faster.
What he has now, 1 I Frame, 10 I Frames, 50 I Frames, is very efficient. It really takes me a max of 2 minutes
to mark cut points in a show like I Love The 80's. VH1 shows are
sometimes hard to see what's show and what's commercial but
jdiner's gopeditor is so easy and fast that it's a piece of cake.

My only suggestion is to allow to create separate files for each
segment between cut points and a max filesize if we want to
just make one or two big files (SVCD)

-Pr.

otakucode

01-20-2003, 10:49 PM

Heh, I've been doing the same thing. All I want is something that will take an SA Tivo stream with OOB chunks and produce a couple files that maintain sync. jdiner claims to have implemented this literally months ago but has allowed feature creep to rule his releases. So SA Tivo owners have been out of luck for a very, very long time. All I wanted was to be able to get to Divx so I could burn em to a DVDR and play them in my Xbox (via Xbox Media Player) or serve them over the network to play from my Xbox. Luckily olaf is around, his utility does the trick. The GOP editing sounds sweet and I can't wait to try it, but I've given up holding my breath no matter how imminent a release ever sounds.

Release as often or as seldom as you like jdiner, but its just flat out impolite to promise a release date "5PM tomorrow" and then not say a word for 3 days. If you had said nothing that'd be fine and I'd be unperturbed, but why say 5PM tomorrow and not update if something came up like a big bug? I enjoy watching the development of this and the fact that you discuss technical details right in your posts, don't take this post as an "I hate jdiner" comment cause its not, I'm just impatient and too trusting when people post things that sound so definite as "5PM tomorrow".

OtakuCODE

Wooly

01-21-2003, 09:48 AM

Actually the GUI is done - the problem is (in order of importance):

1. The man's got a family to spend time with
2. He's gotta get his taxes done (corp. deadline is Jan 31)
3. A memory leak emerged while muxing/integrating LARGE (2+ hour) files

He's fixed every other bug except the leak. He has good quality control (unlike most other programmers (MICROSOFT)), so he's probably spending a few days trying to track it down and fix it before he releases it. I for one applaud the fact that he takes the quality of his work seriously.

I've tested the editor, and believe me - it's amazing. Perhaps the best, easiest-to-use editor I've ever used (and I've used them all). Here's the best part - IT'S ROCK SOLID AND FAST). I can get a 2 hour Taken episode completely edited and ready to go in less than 2 minutes.

It's worth the wait, folks. We're on the 1 yard line, let's just be patient and he'll carry the ball over for us.

Originally posted by rd001
It's a little embarassing but I've actually wore out the Refresh icon in IE6. Literally. It's no longer really visible. Just a empty little desolate discolored patch on the Toolbar. It can't even popup a Tooltip any more.

Actually, we are pretty patient. What's killing us now is knowing that jdiner has it ready for release except for a few final touches in GUI. It's being so close that keeps us coming back to check and be the first to download it. Heck, even Riley is checking. :)

rd001

01-21-2003, 11:04 AM

Originally posted by Wooly
I've tested the editor, and believe me - it's amazing. Perhaps the best, easiest-to-use editor I've ever used (and I've used them all). Here's the best part - IT'S ROCK SOLID AND FAST). I can get a 2 hour Taken episode completely edited and ready to go in less than 2 minutes. It's worth the wait, folks. We're on the 1 yard line, let's just be patient and he'll carry the ball over for us.Now you're toying with us. Can't wait to see it.

Pr.Sinister

01-21-2003, 12:43 PM

Originally posted by Wooly

I've tested the editor, and believe me - it's amazing. Perhaps the best, easiest-to-use editor I've ever used (and I've used them all). Here's the best part - IT'S ROCK SOLID AND FAST). I can get a 2 hour Taken episode completely edited and ready to go in less than 2 minutes.

Well i tried to stay mum about it just so people don't start
drooling but since you did it, i can say i agree 1000%. Jdiner's
GopEditor is a godsend. It's so simple, even George W. Bush
could use it ;)

-Pr.

hancocks

01-22-2003, 07:48 AM

Hi8,

Thanks for that. I think our moderator is fixing a memory leak...

- Stu

hancocks

01-22-2003, 10:30 AM

Folks,

Has anyone been able to (or know how to) build an index from already-split .ty files, meaning if there exists the .m2a and .m2v pieces already, can an index be created (similar to jdiner's tool's function) which could be utilized to edit in sync, either with the tool or some other editor? I suppose a logical addition to that question would be, does anyone know if jdiner's tool will allow one to build an index (and thus edit) if the .ty file has already been split? I ask because I have an archive of such stuff, but some of it is not in .ty format, so how to index becomes a question (or perhaps not possible).
Additionally, I wonder if it would be possible, under those circumstances, to remux the streams (assuming they would be in sync because they would be an entire remux and not in edited fragments -- this may be an erroneous assumtion, I realize), and then split them again with the tool so an index can be generated?

Thoughts, help, comments, etc. welcomed.

Thanks,

- Stu

otakucode

01-22-2003, 10:58 AM

I'm pretty sure you are out of luck, Stu. The elementary streams do not contain enough timing information to restore the sync. jdiner has said before that the reason no external muxing programs can restore syn to the streams is because they lack the extra timing information that is contained in the TY file. That's what his utility is supposed to handle. Sorry ;)

OtakuCODE

hancocks

01-22-2003, 11:09 AM

otakucode,

Thanks. I thought that might be the case. The only thing I don't understand is that when a file is remuxed (say, with TMPGEnc), what happens with respect to sync information. I have to wonder if sync info isn't embedded in the MPEG-2 stream by the remuxing program, and if so, if it may be accessible in some way.
In using M2Edit to do editing, I've had mixed results. Sometimes I've been able to edit and restream quite successfully, other times I've had the snake saying Steve Irwin's lines and Steve hissing back at the snake. Go figure. I've not pinned down any reasons yet as to the disconnect between one stream and another.
I will admit, tho', that jdiner's description of what he's doing and how he's doing it makes total sense. I guess I can't imagine how anyone else in the editing/sync biz is doing it any differently...and maybe they're not.

Thanks (again),

- Stu

jdiner

01-22-2003, 05:04 PM

Originally posted by otakucode
Release as often or as seldom as you like jdiner, but its just flat out impolite to promise a release date "5PM tomorrow" and then not say a word for 3 days.

Yeah. My brother-in-law's mother was just so very inconsiderate dieing out of the blue like that! I man what was she thinking?!!? I had plans and everything.

You people have got to cut me a little slack. I come from a tightly knit family. And when family calls the rest goes by the way side. I am back now, cleaning up the thread of wonderings and other commens and then the release comes.

I was out of town at the funeral and supporting family. I had to leave town with basically no warning. I am sorry if it offended any of you that I said what I did and then it never happened. But be aware in the same circumstances I would do it again.

--jdiner

jdiner

01-22-2003, 05:29 PM

Ok. I cleaned up much of the junk that had gotten in here.

I used a pretty wide paint brush on it. Anything that did not have something real to say rather than just being a comment for or against me, or one about M$ and how evil they are is gone.

Let's all move on. This is pointless. I will delete anything more that gets added to the vein that was deleted.

--jdiner

jdiner

01-22-2003, 05:43 PM

Here is the release that was promised for the end of last week. Some of what you need to know about it.

This isn't really finished. The VOB stuff is still not back in place. Although many of the fixes are inplace that should get it working in "every" case.

You can make cut-lists with the current tool and if the end goal is DVD save the .key and .cut files and use them in the next version of the tools to go right to a VOB.

There are a myriad of keyboard shortcuts in the tool. Many of them have changed since I posted the screenshots.

Several major bugs have been fixed. Some of the editing features were not working right at all. They did due to the nature of my test clips but did not when put through testing. hence the reason I got 8-10 beta testers.

Anyway, here it is. Have fun..

One last time let me state. The output of this is an MPEG-2 program stream. Not a VOB... So try it as you want too. but be SURE to keep anything until you know it works. Once things are deleted there is nothing I or anyone else can do to help you.

Any beta testers feel free to chime in and offers help, advice, your experiences etc... in using it and getting it to work well.

One of the best testers found a very interesting bug that seems to have real issues with how the audio is being processing. Kind of a wild issues actually.

I am wondering how often it occurs and I need more test clips to verify the fix.

So I will be releasing a version of vsplit that will dump some information if it should see the same problem... Please check for it a little later and for those with a pile of DTivo TyStreams please run them through the new version and as always clip the problem section and get ready to send it to me.

I need probably 6-10 more to make sure things really work as expected...